Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2026 [Draft]
I begin by thanking the Criminal Justice Committee for its work on this inquiry. The evidence that it heard and included in the report is sobering, urgent and, frankly, politically and morally challenging.
Let us begin with the reality: almost two thirds of people in our prisons have alcohol use disorder, and around 40 per cent were drunk at the time of their offence, yet referrals to specialist alcohol services remain vanishingly small compared with the scale of need. That is not simply a service gap—it is a political choice.
The committee’s report makes it clear that substance misuse in prison is not an isolated problem. It is the predictable outcome of trauma, poverty, inequality and a system that too often warehouses distress rather than responding to it. If we are serious about justice, we must be serious about public health. Prisons are being asked to manage what are fundamentally health crises.
Overcrowding, extended lock‑up, lack of purposeful activity and fractured mental health provision create conditions in which substances become coping mechanisms. When alcohol is less available, we see substitution with synthetic drugs, which are often more dangerous, unpredictable and harmful, and prison officers are left to pick up the pieces, whether or not they have had the appropriate training or have the correct personal protective equipment.
This is not about individual moral failure but about systemic neglect. The Scottish Greens support the committee’s recommendations on consistent assessment, closing the treatment gap, strengthening pre-release planning and improving continuity of care. We must, however, also be honest that implementing the recommendations remains at the current scale of imprisonment will only ever be a sticking plaster.
Scotland imprisons too many people. Many of them are there for short sentences that are linked to poverty, addiction or low-level offending. We know that short custodial sentences are ineffective, destabilising and criminogenic, yet we continue to rely on them. If 63 per cent of the prison population has alcohol use disorder, that is not a prison problem but a public health emergency that is playing out behind bars.
We should therefore be dramatically expanding community-based disposals with robust treatment requirements. We should be embedding trauma-informed care across the justice system. We should be piloting prison-based overdose prevention centres. We should ensure that medication assisted treatment is universally and proactively available, not just for opioids but for alcohol dependence.
We must guarantee that no one leaves custody without housing; healthcare registration; a prescription, if required; and a live appointment in the community. The weeks after release are the most dangerous and we cannot continue to discharge people into homelessness and expect recovery to follow.
We should go further. We must confront the uncomfortable truth that incarceration itself can deepen harm. When women who are leaving prison are nine times more likely to die from alcohol-related causes than the general population, that demands more than incremental reform—it demands transformation. Justice must mean healing, restoration and addressing the root causes of harm rather than simply punishing its symptoms.
The committee’s report gives us a road map, but the question for Parliament is whether we are brave enough to follow it, not just by tweaking services but by reimagining what justice looks like in Scotland. The Scottish Greens stand ready to support action that treats substance use as a health issue, reduces our reliance on imprisonment and centres dignity, compassion and evidence. If we truly believe that people can change, our system must also change.