Why releasing prisoners early to ease overcrowding will make Scotland a safer place
It is easy, I know, to think that the crisis we have been managing for many months in Scottish prisons does not affect you.
When populations in custody are as high and complex as they are right now – with rehabilitative activities curtailed, time in cells increased, tensions raised, relationships strained, and frustrations boiling over into low level violence – there is reassurance in the fact that it is, at least, contained behind those high prison walls.
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Hide AdBut the reality is, what happens in our establishments affects us all.
I am a chief executive and formerly a prison governor and a prison officer. But I am also a mother, a grandmother, a neighbour and friend.


Just like everyone else, I want to live in a community that is safe and peaceful, with people who are happy, healthy, and respectful.
My professional life teaches me what a difference prisons can make to my life as a citizen.
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Hide AdThis week, MSPs will vote on legislation which could see hundreds of people released early to deal with the population crisis our staff are managing on a daily basis.
It is not unreasonable for members of the public to ask how that makes them safer.
It is not unfair for victims of crime, and their families, to ask why people should have their sentences reduced.
The answer is that we all have a vested interest in rehabilitation that works.
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Hide AdMost people in our establishments will, at some point, return to their communities.
We want their futures to be better than the experiences that brought them to us in the first place.
We want to have helped them with the underlying challenges they face, and the causes of their offending, by the point of their release.
We want that for them and their families. For their children, so we see less intergenerational engagement with the justice system.
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Hide AdBut we also want it for perfectly understandable, selfish reasons. These are our communities that they will return to, and we want to live in peaceful environments with neighbours we can get along with.
Over the past year, I have often been asked if our establishments remain safe and secure when so many of them are overcrowded and at red status because of their population levels.
My answer to that has been, and remains, yes, absolutely – but it is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain.
The fact that they have remained so this far is only because of the resilience, dedication, and skill of senior leaders and officers working in those extremely challenging situations.
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Hide AdBut safe and secure cannot be what we aim for. It must be our floor, our absolute minimum, not our ceiling.
Scotland works, when prisons work. It works, when our staff are given the time and resource to do the job they excel at. And that is building relationships, which are the bedrock of all we do, and supporting rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation takes many forms. It could be a programme designed to address a particular offending behaviour, like violent or sexual crime, but it can also be so much more than that.
We work with excellent partners to deliver a range of activities that address trauma and adverse childhood experience, that help people in recovery from drug and alcohol issues, or that teach people basic life skills so they can one day return home and cook the simple meals that many of us take for granted.
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Hide AdWe support people’s personal journey through the arts and music, we pick up on gaps in their education, and we help them access vocational skills and training to give them hope of employment on release.
This is the work we can do when prisons work properly.
But too often, it is not possible when our population remains so high and complex. Our staff have to prioritise what we refer to as transactional work – making sure people are fed, clean, and supported if they’re in crisis.
If that is all we do, if it takes up all the time and capacity of our staff, then we are not properly serving and protecting the public in the way we want to.
I can tell you, as someone who has walked those halls, not being able to do that quality work with people in our care affects our staff’s morale, just as it is does that of the people in custody. But that is the reality, when our population is this high and complex.
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Hide AdComplexity. It’s a word we use a lot when describing our population, but perhaps do not fully explain what we mean or why it matters, so let me try.
Prisons hold a range of people – men and women; young adults, which is anyone under 21; people who have committed sexual offences and those who have not; and also people who have not been convicted of any crimes at all, but have been remanded to us by the courts.
All those different groups of people need to be held separately – men from women; young from the over 21s; convicted from remand, sex offenders from mainstream population, etc.
And then there are members of serious and organised crime groups, who need to be kept separate from each other; and, also, individuals who, because of their particular risks or vulnerabilities, simply cannot share a room. That is before we get into the myriad of mental health and social care needs of our population.
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Hide AdRight now, we have a lot of all these people, so our population is particularly complex.
All of this puts limits on the total space available to us.
The more we over-occupy prisons, the more difficult everything becomes, and the more we risk a situation where even doing the basics becomes unachievable, and concerns are raised about how we meet our legal obligations and provide decency for those in our care.
But it is not all doom and gloom. On a daily basis, I see lives turned around, families supported, and beacons of light spark up in the gloom.
I want that for everyone in our care – for their sake, for their families, and for all of Scotland.
- Teresa Medhurst is chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service