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Criminal Justice Committee 11 March 2026 [Draft]

11 Mar 2026 · S6 · Criminal Justice Committee

Item of business

Criminal Justice System (Challenges for Session 7)

Sara Snell Watch on SPTV

There are a range of reasons why staff might be short in a particular prison. That might be a recruitment or retention issue or it might be a sickness absence issue. Another element is directly related to overcrowding. Prisons might be asked to take additional prisoners, but there is no additional staffing for that. That is not just about SPS staff; it might also be healthcare staff or prison-based social work staff.09:45For example, when Low Moss was asked to take 100 more prisoners, there was no increase in the overall staffing level; instead, staff were asked to do overtime and were paid ex gratia. That sort of measure might be welcome and feasible if it is temporary, but when it becomes a long-term solution, people get tired and exhausted and no longer want the overtime. They just want to work the ordinary hours that they are scheduled to work.So, there is a range of causes. We know that there was a lot of change during Covid, with older staff moving on and new staff coming in, and the new people were not used to the kind of prison regime or routine that had been typical before Covid. Some staff found it very difficult to adjust to a more normal prison regime, so there has been some attrition.The most significant thing that we have seen affecting people’s confidence and competence is the ability for them to be buddied, mentored or looked after when they first join. Some brand-new staff are being mentored by staff who perhaps have been in the job as little as six months themselves. I would say that six months is rare, but mentoring staff will have been on the job perhaps only two years and, at most, five. That results in people getting a certain level of on-the job learning in what is a very difficult job with significant stresses.In our inspections, we have seen staff doing their very best, running multiple regimes in busy halls or flats; rushing to ensure that those held on the wings under rule 95 get their statutory minimum entitlements; or ensuring that people get to visits, get food or get time in the fresh air. Honestly, we have seen some people get to the end of these very pressured days and say, “I can’t come back in tomorrow.” We have indeed seen that level of exhaustion in some of the places where staffing is a particularly difficult issue.As I think that you will know, the Prison Service has responded to that by asking individual prisons to introduce a changed approach to rostering, shortening the day for prisoners and putting in small resources to try to ease the pressures and even, in some cases, to free up staff for additional work. However, we are right at the beginning of all that, and it has not been introduced in all prisons yet. We recently visited a prison that was three weeks into the new approach, and our concerns, which are on the record, were about the important things that it potentially takes away from prisoners, such as access to family—and children, in particular—if later visits in the evening are not possible. As a result, families are faced with the choice of either taking children out of school, which is clearly not good for the children, or having shorter visits.If we are talking about, say, Perth, a prisoner might say, “I don’t want my daughter to come over from Glasgow on an evening, because she’ll have to come out of school early”, but if they give up their evening opportunity so that the daughter now comes on a Saturday, they will have only 40 minutes instead of an hour with her. I know that that is a very specific example, but it is those sorts of things that we are anxious about.We are also anxious that this shortened day has been created only by the staff agreeing to do long days at other times. As a result, they will do maybe four 12-hour shifts on the trot and then have a significant amount of time off. At our recent prison visit, the staff were very pro the approach and found it very positive for their work-life balance; because the day was shorter, they were getting home earlier. However, we worry that, over time, staff sickness absence and attrition might rise again, because those kinds of long shifts are quite demanding. Moreover, if you lose somebody off that kind of long shift, you cannot backfill them; in other words, there are no people doing the early shift who can be asked to extend into the late shift or, vice versa, there is no one who can be asked to come in early. In the end, actually managing your sickness absence flexibly can become quite difficult.I am sorry—that was a very long answer to an important question.

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Criminal Justice Committee 11 March 2026 [Draft]

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