SCOTLAND'S head of prisons has told ministers the country's overcrowded prisons are in a state of "emergency" and has called for a cap on the number of people behind bars and Scandinavian-style alternatives to imprisonment for minor offenders.
Mike Ewart, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, spoke out after the nation's prison population last week hit a record high of 8,137. Scotland's eight prisons are designed to hold a maximum of 6,625 people.
Ewart said the service h
ad reached a point where the prison population has exceeded design capacity and the level at which it is safe to operate.
He said: "The risk has become unacceptable. I would be derelict in my duties if I had not let ministers know, but I could not divulge what ministerial advice has been given.
"It is an emergency. We are legally required to take every prisoner we are sent but we are over design capacity and over the safe legal limits. What we are doing is putting Scotland at risk."
Ewart is understood to have sought legal advice on his two conflicting duties, to look after every prisoner in his care and to lock up everybody given a custodial sentence. There is some concern in the prison service that jails are now so overcrowded they could be subjected to a legal challenge on health and safety grounds. The exact legal threshold for prison numbers has never been tested in court.
Scottish prison numbers have risen relentlessly in recent years, despite relatively stable crime figures and widespread consensus among criminal justice experts that petty criminals who are jailed are more likely to reoffend than those who are given non-custodial sentences.
Scotland's prison population traditionally peaks late in the summer and should now be beginning a long seasonal decline. However, prisons are now remaining overcrowded for longer.
Overall, Scotland's prisons can usually squeeze in up to 8,000 people by doubling prisoners up in one cell.
Last month, the population topped 8,000 for the first time, a watershed that has provoked Ewart, the Prison Officers' Association and others to raise real concerns.
Ewart said: "We need a cap on the prisoner numbers in the longer term. The evidence from other European jurisdictions shows that this is what they have done to move away from excessively high prison populations. We need to be able to say, when we are full, we are full. We are not safer locking these people up. It is a pernicious lie to say this is about community respite. Putting more people in prison actually makes us less safe. Having reached this level, which is unsafe operationally and legally, I have to speak out."
A commission led by former First Minister Henry McLeish this summer called for the prison population to fall by a third, to close to its levels in the 1990s. McLeish recommended a huge cut in the number of people serving six months or less. Such minor criminals make up four-fifths of the prison population. Research shows they are more, rather than less, likely to reoffend after serving time in jail rather than in a community scheme.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has backed many of McLeish's proposals.
