Funding urged for overhaul of justice system

Ministers are being urged to consider how additional cash for “radical” measures could be used to tackle longstanding issues in Scotland’s justice system.

MSPS on Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee have called on the Scottish Government to “explore additional funding that would be more radical”.

This, they say, would be more “likely to break the cycle of long court delays, overcrowded prisons and a high remand population”.

Spending on the justice sector totalled just over £3 billion in the 2021-22 budget, with MSPS saying this was “one of the smaller areas of spend” compared to over £16.6bn for health and sport and almost £10bn for communities and local government.

In a report ahead of the draft Scottish Budget on December 9, the committee said “further sustained increases in capital budgets” were needed for both Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to modernise buildings, vehicles and IT.

They also called for a “sustained, above inflation injection of funds into the prison budget”, citing problems such as the high prison population, drug misuse in jails, the large number of untried prisoners and the presence of serious and organised crime groups.

The committee said “targeted investments now” on projects such as recovery cafes and residential rehabilitation projects could help “deliver savings in the longer term”.

The MSPS said: “It is our view that the current budget challenges are a symptom of the wider problems in the justice sector that have not been significantly addressed over many years.”