Margaret Mitchell

It is gathering this information before it considers the government’s draft 2020/21 budget, and future spending in this area. Scotland has one of the highest per-capita prison populations in western Europe.

The increased scrutiny in this area comes after recent legislative changes were passed which aim to reduce the number of prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months, and consequently increasing the use of alternatives to custody.

It also follows work by the committee into issues like prisoners being held on remand, where the committee found rates of this category of prisoner in Scotland to be notably high.

Reports last week also indicated that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has had to suspend its throughcare scheme, which offered inmates extra support to leave jail and transition successfully to life on the outside, with seconded SPS staff moving back to their original roles. These changes were made for “operational reasons”.

In particular, the committee is seeking to hear more about: budgets provided to the public, third and voluntary sectors for health, education, employment, through-care, family-contact, rehabilitation/re-offending, in-cell technology and other services provided to prisoners; longer-term challenges and financial requirements to tackle issues such as staffing levels in prisons, over-crowding, drug use, safety and security of staff and prisoners, the use of the open estate and an ageing prison population and views on how to achieve a rebalancing over the longer-term in expenditure on prisons and that of community-based alternatives to incarceration and preventative spend, including the challenges of provision in remote or rural areas.

Committee convener Margaret Mitchell MSP said: “It’s clear with the announcement last week on Throughcare and the record high-levels of incarnation that the prison system is under pressure.

“The Scottish government has made a range of commitments to improve our post-conviction criminal justice system, but are these commitments prioritised with budget spending?

“To allow the Justice Committee to hold the Scottish government to account, we need to gather the views of those involved with the system, before asking some probing questions.”