On 11 November 2022 HMIPS published its Annual Report 2021-2022 in which it described Scotland’s prisons during the pandemic as “places of containment, rather than          rehabilitation”, questioning the equivalence of healthcare in and outside prisons, and yet again, drawing attention to serious issues of remand; overcrowding; child imprisonment; barriers to progression; and the estate’s ageing infrastructure – going so far as to moot the possibility of some prisons being closed.