Meeting of the Parliament 20 February 2025
Today’s debate examines the difficult issue of prison populations, the justice system and ensuring that the Scottish public are kept safe from harm. If we look at the current environment, we see that rising prison populations are causing issues for Governments across the whole UK. Here in Scotland, the prison population often exceeded 8,300 last year, and projections indicate that the numbers will continue to rise, potentially to record levels. It has been made clear to me and my colleagues at meetings of the Criminal Justice Committee that those numbers are unsustainable without intervention.
Further instability will put the effective functioning of our Prison Service at risk, including the ability to rehabilitate offenders, so it is critical that we explore a range of actions to ensure that the system operates safely and effectively for staff and prisoners alike. The announcement of an independent review of sentencing and penal policy is a step towards ensuring that the risk does not become a reality.
It might be inferred that larger prison populations indicate that Scotland is becoming more dangerous but, as we have heard, recorded crime has continued to trend downward over the past two decades. There are numerous reasons for the increasing prison population, including increased sentencing lengths, more convictions for historical offences and increasingly complex situations regarding separating groups of prisoners from one another—all issues that we hear about regularly in the Criminal Justice Committee. In exploring the topic, we have previously heard evidence that those who are released from short custodial sentences are reconvicted at a rate that is almost twice that of those who are sentenced to a community payback order. Such statistics remind us that, although appropriate in many cases, short prison sentences are often not the best way to reduce reoffending.
So far, the Scottish Government has taken a range of actions to address rising prison populations. They include extending the presumption against short-term sentences, introducing electronically monitored bail and enabling that time served to be taken into account at sentencing, and strengthening alternatives to remand. Those steps are mitigatory, so it is necessary for further in-depth research to take place on imprisonment and community-based sentences. Therefore, as I have said, I whole-heartedly welcome an externally-led review of sentencing and penal policy.
As with so many issues, addressing the topic will cost money. The Scottish Government has increased the justice allocation in the budget for the second year running. If my colleagues across parties support the budget, they will be supporting an investment of almost £4.2 billion in justice, which is an increase of nearly £400 million. That is my call to the other parties in considering supporting the budget.
The cabinet secretary will not be surprised to hear—in fact, she mentioned it herself—that if we want to change radically the balance between community rehabilitation and custody, we need to fund that. I welcome the continued investment in criminal justice social work services. We cannot change the balance overnight, but we need to change it gradually over a set period. There should be increased investment year on year until that balance is achieved.