Another early prisoner release scheme has been backed by a Holyrood committee as the justice secretary warned of the “emergency situation” inside Scotland’s jails.
The Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday backed a draft for the Early Release of Prisoners (Scotland) Regulations 2025.
It will be Scotland’s third early prisoner release scheme if it is voted forward. The plans must also be approved by the Holyrood chamber at a later date before coming into force.
Justice secretary Angela Constance told the committee the proposals are only being discussed due to the current situation in Scotland’s prisons.
She said: “The continued rise in the prison population and its complexity is putting significant pressure on our prisons, impacting the Scottish Prison Service and partners’ ability to ensure prisons function effectively and safely and accommodate those who pose the greatest risk of harm.”
The plans will see the release of prisoners who are sentenced to less than four years and are due to be freed within 180 days of certain dates between November and April 2026.
Releases will take place across a six-month period, but certain prisoners will not be freed early.
These include those serving a life sentence and those in prison for a domestic abuse offence or subject to sexual offender notification requirements.
Constance continued: “It is my view that the legal test for emergency release has been met and is necessary and proportionate to ensure the prison service can maintain security and good order of prisons and the health safety and welfare of prisoners and prison staff.
“While this was not a decision that was taken lightly, the increasing number of prisoners in custody is now at a level where the Scottish Prison Service’s assessed capacity tolerance has been breached on more than one occasion.”
She later said: “It’s an emergency situation because of the risk to health, wellbeing and safety of both staff and prisoners. Doing nothing is not an option. Our hard-working prison staff and their partners need to know that we have their back, they need to know that help is coming.”
But some members of the committee were critical of the proposed plans.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Liam Kerr said he opposes the plans and described them as a “knee-jerk response”.
He said: “I think it’s clear that Victim Support Scotland are right when they say this is no solution and we will be in this situation next April, following a further 1,000 prisoners having been released.
“I think the knee-jerk response has now become the default response and there’s been no real progress since the previous early releases to stop this repeatedly happening.”
He also said he had not seen “enough evidence of other options being considered”.
Scottish Labour justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill also opposed the plans as she said: “There are consequences, it isn’t a straight-forward issue and we want to release the pressure in our prisons, but if we do so this is the third time we’ve been here.
“My main concern is that I just do not want to endorse an approach of managing prisoners in this way.”
Speaking earlier on BBC Radio Scotland, Phil Fairlie, the assistant general secretary of the Scottish Prison Officers Association, said jails are not “out of control”, but prison officers are struggling to maintain order.
He said another round of early prisoner releases will result in relief in the system which will be welcome, but he warned it will only be “temporary” without wider reform.
“The issue for us is this is now the third time in this position and the relief we get from that, which is welcome, is very short-lived,” Mr Fairlie said.
“We do start to see those numbers creeping back up again – if it’s not the same people coming back, it is more people being added to the prisoner population.
“It is going to take a much more fundamental change to the system than that.”
Speaking to journalists at the IPPR Scotland conference on Wednesday, First Minister John Swinney said: “We’re still imprisoning large numbers of people for relatively short periods of time. We are also placing on remand larger numbers of people as well.
“Also, because of the success of the police and the Crown imprisoning people for longer periods because of the heinous crimes that they have committed, that means that more of our prison population is taken up by longer serving individuals who will be there for longer.
“There are issues that we have to address about remand and about short-term sentences. Long sentences for heinous crimes, they are necessary, but I think there is a need for us to look at other disposals.”
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