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”.