How do we reduce Scotland’s prison population?
Each week the Sunday Herald puts the most contentious issues of the day under the magnifying glass to find out what’s true, what’s false and what needs to be done. Today, Chief Reporter Judith Duffy looks at how we can cut prison numbers
EDDIE knows all about being in prison. The 51-year-old has spent 20 years inside for three separate sentences, including one for armed robbery. “Nobody ever leaves prison with the intention of coming back in two years, or two weeks, or two days,” he said. “But that is what happens as they are terrified and they don’t know how to deal with being released from prison. It is that anxiety which normally turns them back to what they know – drugs, or alcohol or criminality, whatever it may be.”
Eddie, who did not want his last name to be used, has managed to turn his life around and now mentors others through his work for social enterprise initiative Braveheart Industries which provides employment opportunities for offenders with a violent history.
It runs the Street & Arrow food truck, based in Mansfield Park in Partick, Glasgow, which is inspired by an LA initiative to help former gang members into work and aims to give offenders a second chance through employment opportunities.
Speaking outside the truck, Eddie gestures at the bustle behind the counter, where men and women clad in distinctive pink T-shirts are pouring coffees and preparing sandwiches for lunchtime.
“If this wasn’t here, they would likely be going back into prison,” he said. “You just need to look at the evidence.”
The facts on our prison population are stark. Scotland has one of the highest imprisonment rates in Western Europe. Even more worrying is the high rate of recidivism – nearly 60 per cent of people sentenced to prison are reconvicted within a year and around 40 per cent return to prison within a year of being released. If locking criminals up is supposed to be a deterrent, it clearly doesn’t appear to be working for many.
Will Linden, acting director of Police Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), which set up Braveheart Industries, said while some individuals will come out of prison and not offend again, there are many caught in a “churn” of prison.
“What you have got is a huge cohort of people who are just going in and out of prison and technically all they are being is housed,” he said.
“There is no form of transformative justice going on here, we are not actually helping people to help themselves to change.
“So they are not really coming out any better than when they went in. There is a number of people where it is just this continual cycle.”
The issue was recognised in the Scottish Government’s justice strategy published in 2012, which states a vision of developing alternatives to prison to see more people serve sentences in the community, ease prison overcrowding and have a prison estate which “only holds those offenders that need to be there for public safety”.
Four years ago the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) developed an operating philosophy which included becoming “agents of transformational change”.
Tom Fox, head of corporate affairs for the SPS, admits this sounds like “gobbledygook” – but says, put simply, it is about recognising that prisons don’t change people and that people have to change themselves.
“What we recognised was those individuals need to transform themselves – not everyone will and not everyone will in the same timeframe, but if we provide the right kind of environment then the chances of success increase,” he said.
Fox points to one example of how this works in practice as the provision of opportunities for prisoners at HMP Low Moss, near Glasgow, to gain recognised qualifications in skills such as waste recycling and waste management. Another example is the Freedom Bakery, again based at Low Moss. It was set up in 2015 and trains inmates in the skills of artisan baking.
“That is not about turning out hundreds of artisan bakers,” Fox said. “It is about teaching people the discipline of work, teaching people how to work together as a team for a common goal and embedding that ethic of being able to create something positive through your own efforts.
“We are not talking about huge numbers of people [being involved], but it has been quite remarkable the impact that has had on people who have been part of that process.”
A snapshot of the current prison population in Scotland published by SPS shows there are currently 7,449 prisoners in custody in Scotland. The majority are male adults who have received a sentence, which totals 5,518. There are 278 sentenced female adults.
When it comes to inmates under the age of 21, there are 249 male young offenders and six female young offenders in this category. There are also 965 untried men and 55 untried women being held in prison.
The latest available figures show Scotland has an incarceration rate of 145 per 100,000 population – the second highest in Western Europe, topped only by England and Wales at 149. The lowest is in Japan at 51 and Finland at 55 – while the highest rates are in the USA at 707 per 100,000 and the Russian Federation at 467.
However, Fox said prison numbers had declined by around 1,000 in Scotland in the last six or seven years – a change to when prisons were “bursting at the seams” – and numbers of young offenders in particular had shown a dramatic drop by nearly half.
“There has been a whole system approach in looking at ways of diverting people away from custody and it seems to have been successful,” he said.
“The good news about that is today’s young offenders are tomorrow’s long-term prisoners – and if we have reduced that number as dramatically as we have, then that possibly is a really positive sign for the future.”
He added: “If harsh regimes and high levels of punishment worked, then some countries in the world, which seem to me to be a lot less safe than others, would instead be the safest places on earth.
“If we get it right in terms of what we do with people who come into custody, and send them back into the community less likely to offend, then it makes Scotland safer for all of us. I think people get that.”
One option which is currently being explored by ministers as an alternative to custody is a radical expansion of electronic tags, with the use of GPS tracking and alcohol monitoring technology. A consultation on the plans is currently being carried out and is due to close next month.
Lisa Mackenzie, spokeswoman for penal reform charity Howard League Scotland, said this was an idea which should be looked at, but warned it would have to be properly implemented.
“It can’t just be about sticking a tag on an ankle and it is sorted,” she said.“It has got to be done carefully and with social support as well – but there are examples of other countries which have used it in lieu of short prison sentences and we should look at that.”
She also pointed to other actions which could be taken to help former prisoners back into society – including reforming the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, which sets out conditions on when a prisoner’s conviction can be regarded as being spent and does not have to be declared on job applications.
Last year, the Scottish Government unveiled plans which would mean, for example, only those sentenced to more than four years in prison would always have to tell employers about their records, instead of the current 30 months. The Government says it is carefully considering proposals, but has not yet implemented any changes.
Mackenzie said: “It is a complex piece of legislation and there are lists of exceptions of jobs where you will always have to declare convictions. The legislation was amended in England and Wales about three years ago and made slightly more liberal but we haven’t done that yet. In Scotland now we are out of step – and that does have a real impact on people’s lives.”
Back at the Street & Arrow food truck, Eddie tells how he applied for “hundreds, if not thousands” of jobs when he was released from prison. However, his efforts were unsuccessful until he was given an opportunity to work by the VRU. He said: “I spent a long time in prison – when I came out I turned my life around and everything was going well – except I couldn’t get any work. I couldn’t even get an interview. I had never worked in my life before and had no references, no skills and no support.”
Now Eddie is employed by Braveheart Industries helping mentor and support employees at the food truck. He also recently launched a mentoring programme in HMP Shotts to provide support to long-term inmates, which encourages abstinence.
The VRU’s Will Linden said work the organisation had previously carried out around tackling Scotland’s gang culture had shown simply expecting people to stop offending was not a simple solution.
“We often ask people to stop being in gangs, but then what we do as a society is we don’t often accept people into our own gangs,” he said. “We say please stop offending, stop taking drugs and alcohol – but you can’t come and ‘play’ with us. We look for people to change, but then we don’t support it.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We are committed to reducing the unacceptably high rate of imprisonment in Scotland – which remains the second highest in Western Europe.
“We’re taking forward a range of measures to support this including options to expand the use of electronic monitoring and reduce the use of short-term imprisonment in favour of greater use of community sentences, which help to reduce reoffending by supporting people to turn their lives around and in so doing, help keep crime down and our communities safer.
“Since 2016, we have provided an additional £1.5 million of funding to support services to reduce the use of remand for women, including supervised bail.”