On 24 November 2023, the Criminal Justice Committee published its pre-budget scrutiny report, summarising the evidence received, with its conclusions and recommendations best summarised by the following:     

“[t]he Committee is of the view that the funding situation facing the criminal justice sector cannot be allowed to continue …. We cannot … continue to provide ever increasing small sums of finance seemingly to effectively stand still in a business-as-usual fashion…. The Scottish Government and others through its Justice Board should identify and implement what the Cabinet Secretary herself recognises are spend to-save reforms. With some upfront investment, such reforms should yield cost savings over the longer term and have clear timescales … [D]ebates around the numbers of people we send to prison and the need for effective alternatives to incarceration through community disposals have been longstanding with no discernible move to realising this…. There is still inconsistent provision of effective community justice disposals …. In time, this reform should reduce prison numbers which in turn reduces costs, reoffending and the number of prison places needed, or even the number of prisons. Savings from these reforms can be reinvested in the system.”

On 14 November 2023, the Scottish Government published its Prison Population Projections for the six month period from October 2023 to March 2024. The projected population range is between 7,500 and 8,650. It followed receipt of a letter that the Prison Governors' Association had sent to the Scottish Parliament's Criminal Justice Committee in which its Chair, Natalie Beal, wrote: “If we continue this path, we are at best providing humane containment, albeit even this may be at a stretch, with many prisons already operating restricted regimes, resulting in the provision of little or no positive rehabilitative work”.