Rise in Scotland’s prison population despite drive to end short sentences

● Serious offenders spend longer inside ● Still too many on less than 12 months

Serious criminals who “pose a risk of harm to the public” are spending longer in jail in Scotland with the prison population having grown over the past two years.

The rise of about 700 to an average of 8,200 inmates in prisons across the country in 2019/20 comes despite a drive to phase out short sentences of less than 12 months, with a presumption against this introduced over a year ago.

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf says there are still too many prisoners getting shorter sentences, but the end of automatic early release and reduced use of home detention curfews has contributed to the rise in numbers.

“These figures indicate that those who commit serious crimes and pose a risk of harm to the public are spending longer in prison than previously,” Mr Yousaf said.

“However, there is still a large proportion of men and women in custody given very short prison terms for less serious offences.

“While such decisions are made based on the facts and circumstances before the Sheriff or Judge, we know that people released from a short prison sentence of 12 months or less are reconvicted nearly twice as often than those sentenced to serve community payback orders (CPOS), the mostcommonlyusedcommunity sentence.”

The number of “full-year” prisoners - those serving longer sentences - has seen a “rapid increase” over the past two years, by 8 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

Over the past ten years, since the presumption against short sentences was first introduced - initially for six months in 2011 - the “part-year” population has fallen continuously by around 22 per cent overall.

“It appears it is the increase in the full-year population that has driven the recent sharp increase in the prison population overall,” today’s report states.

The figures are contained in the chief statisticians’ report yesterday which also cites an Audit Scotland report warning financial restrictions on rehabilitation programmes and staff are “preventing prisoners from qualifying for release on parole” as a possible reason for the rise in prison numbers.

Inmates served 168.8 consecutive days on average, a rise of 9.6 over the same time period and up from 124.7 days at the start of the decade.

A total of 17,294 convicts were imprisoned for all or part of 2019-20 - a fall of 15.25 per cent from the 20,407 in 201011. Since the start of the decade, the proportion of people leaving prison having spent a year or more in custody is up from 7 per cent to 10 per cent, while thosewhospendthreemonths or less in custody has fallen from 70 per cent to 58 per cent.