News

CPT Recommendations Scotland - March 2014

Progress must be made if Scottish prisons are to satisfy the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and the European Convention on Human Rights. While progress has been made in the smooth transfer of prison health services to the NHS, the CPT have been critical of prison safety and expressed concerned over lack of meaningful and rehabilitative activity in a number of Scottish prisons. The most significant problems they highlighted were:

  • There were a number of allegations of excessive force by prison officers in Barlinnie and verbal abuse in Cornton Vale;
  • A number of prisoners in Kilmarnock felt unsafe and then prison was generally tense;
  • Upon admission to Barlinnie people were held in cupboard-like cublicles (1m squared, coloquially known as 'dog boxes');
  • Barlinnie prison is operating at 120% capacity;
  • Prisoners in Barlinnie are spending up to 22 hours a day in their cells;
  • Women held in HMP Edinburgh were also spending a similarly considerable percentage of their day confined to their cells. 

Their specific recommendations to the SPS were:

  • CPT advocates greater employment of alternatives to custody as the key means to reduce prison overcrowding; 
  • Recommends that serious mental health prisoners not be held in segregation units and be transferred more rapidly to appropriate in-patient facilities;
  • Clinical psychologists be employed to deal specifically with women prisoners who exhibit severe disorders;
  • Increased safeguards around discipline and segregation are necessary;
  • There must be increased support for foreign national prisoners.

Read the CPT Report here 

Read a summary of their report here: CPT report on the United Kingdom

Read a straightforward summary of Article 3 on the Prevention of Torture

Scotland's Prison Population 1998-2013

It is hard to recall a time when Scotland's prison population wasn't rising, and since 1998 the population has increased by 33%. Our per capita imprisonment rates far outstrips other small countries with similar populations in Europe. These figures highlight the inescapable reality that is Scottish prison excess and prison expansion.

Follow the link to check-out our prison population inforgraphic: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1420938-create-your-own

Scottish Sentences

Some interesting top line stats in most recent Safer Communities and Justice Brief: Avg sentence in 2012/13 was just over 9mnths, which is almost 2mnths longer than in 2006/07. Use of social work orders has increased slightly, but that is following 2 years of decreased use

See more here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0044/00443449.pdf

HLS Event in the News

Lorna Holmes of Includem delivered a thoughtful and detailed presentation on Inclusion Plus for HLS recently. This potentially life changing initiative in Dundee involves specialist services which are working alongside schools to help disadvantaged and disaffected young people reduce exclusion, raise aspirations, improve family relationships and ultimately improve life chances by working towards a better future. The talk was covered in The Herald the following day and has also received further press coverage in Hollyrood magazine.

Read more here:
Inclusion scheme aiming to keep youngsters in school: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/inclusion-scheme-aiming-to-...
Going Back to School: http://www.holyrood.com/2014/03/going-back-to-school/

Scottish Prisons in the News

64% of women in Cornton Vale are currently on suicide watch, according to The Herald today. Prison continues to an unsuitable setting for the vast majority of women offenders, whose crimes tend to be petty in nature, rather than violent. Further, we know that women experience prison differently to men, many women prisoners have themselves been victims of repeated forms of sexual and physical violence and suffer from high rates of mental illness. Prison regimes, however, are designed based around the needs and patterns of behaviour shown by male prisoners. The Howard League Scotland continues to call for change to how we treat convicted women, we need to move from a punishment model to a restorative one, which can tackle the complex needs exhibit by women prisoners and, crucially, reduce re-offending.

Read more here:
'Two in three women in Scots prison are on suicide watch': http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/two-in-three-women-in-scots...
The Angiolini Commission: http://www.howardleague.scot/news/2014/february/angiolini-commission-wom...

Pages

Archive

2021

2020

2018

2015

2014

2006