Shocking breakdown of prison discipline shows how Scotland's justice system isn't working
Scotland needs to send fewer people to prison but those who are locked up must serve a sentence that reflects their crime, not the number of available beds
New figures showing inmates have broken prison rules nearly 100,000 times since 2022 suggest that discipline behind bars is about as strict as in our schools, where teachers report that swearing and even violence often has few real consequences for pupils.
The number of prisoners caught breaking the rules rose from just over 6,000 in 2022 to 6,900 last year. For context, the average daily prison population in Scotland was 7,860 in 2023-24. One prisoner broke the rules a staggering 143 times.
Not unreasonably, the Scottish Conservatives, who obtained the figures by making a Freedom of Information request, called for no prisoner who had broken the rules to be eligible for early release, with the party’s justice spokesman Liam Kerr saying: “At least somewhere in the justice system, criminals need to realise that actions have consequences.”
£50,000 a year for each inmate
However, with so many rule-breakers, it seems impractical that Scotland’s controversial ‘even earlier’ early release scheme could exclude them all. With Scotland’s prisons suffering from severe overcrowding, the Scottish Government introduced emergency legislation last year so that some criminals serving less than four years can be freed after completing just 40 per cent of their sentence, rather than half.
Some might think the solution is to build more prisons. However, as retired senior police officer Tom Wood wrote in The Scotsman last year, Scotland already locks up more of its population than most other countries in Western Europe. And given it costs about £50,000 a year to keep just one inmate, another solution really does need to be found.
READ MORE: Why early release of 188 violent criminals from Scotland's prisons is even worse than it sounds
Wood suggested the overcrowding crisis could be a blessing in disguise, saying “this could galvanise us to finally change course and invest seriously in alternatives to prison. We cannot keep locking up so many of our young people and doing them more harm than good.”
We need prisons, in which discipline is maintained, to keep violent, dangerous people off Scotland’s streets. However, it’s past time to make serious reforms to our justice system so fewer people end up in a cell and those who do serve a sentence that reflects their crime, not the number of available beds.