Scotland’s prisons are “bursting at the seams” with nearly 1,800 prisoners doubling up in cells built for one person.
Ten of the country’s prisons are also overcrowded, with Barlinnie operating at 140 per cent capacity.
Liberal Democrat MSP Liam McArthur, who unearthed the figures, said: “Overcrowding puts services at risk, threatens staff safety and makes it far more difficult to successfully rehabilitate people.”
Campaigners have regularly warned about the human rights and safety implications of crammed prisons.
New stats reveal the extent of the crisis.
As of July, Addiewell and Dumfries prisons had an average occupancy rate of 103 per cent and 110 per cent.
The figures for Edinburgh, Glenochil, Greenock, Inverness and Kilmarnock also exceeded 100 per cent.
Low Moss was operating at 102 per cent and the figure for Perth was 107 per cent.
Barlinnie has a design capacity of 987 but had an average occupancy rate of 1,379.
Michael Stoney, the Barlinnie governor, said in the summer he feared his own prison is so overcrowded and outdated it risks “catastrophic failure”.
He said: “This prison can’t last that much longer. The infrastructure fails consistently.”
“A lot of my time is just trying to keep the prison functional.
Barlinnie will be replaced, but it was reported that a Government update on major infrastructure projects had deleted the timings and costs of the scheme.
The chief inspector for Scottish prisons recently warned the number of people in custody is projected to soar in the next year.
Wendy Sinclair-Gieben said inmate numbers had fallen during the pandemic, but they were likely to go above 8,000 over the coming year.
She said: “Put simply, we send far too many people to prison for the limited accommodation and resourcing available to achieve rehabilitative change,” she said.
“The reason I and my predecessors have focused strongly on overcrowding is that it affects every part of the criminal justice system, in particular the risk to the community.
“If individuals do not have their risks and needs addressed in prison, the rate of recidivism will remain high, and at significant cost to the public purse.”
McArthur said: “For years we have been highlighting the serious problem of overcrowding across our prison estate. On the SNP’s watch, most prisons are now bursting at the seams with people being packed in like sardines.
“Ministers, however, appear unable or unwilling to respond to the crisis. The project to replace Scotland’s largest prison, HMP Barlinnie, has become a farce. Earlier estimates, costs and timescales have been abandoned and replaced with a holding statement.
“To ease the mounting pressures on prisons, we would create a properly-funded justice system that can deliver robust and credible community sentences where appropriate.
“We also need to see a modern prison estate that can strike a balance between punishing, rehabilitating and supporting; that is how we will reduce reoffending and make communities safer.”
Labour MSP Pauline McNeill said: “This shocking revelation follows weeks of complaints about HMP Barlinnie and other prisons in Scotland for quite some time.”
“We are at risk of breaching our human rights obligations and failing to comply with international good standards. Failure to expand the prison estate in line with need is also making the jobs of staff more and more difficult.
“The SNP has consistently failed to modernise the prison estate during their time in Government.
“While the replacement of HMP Barlinnie will create an additional 300 spaces for prisoners, it is unacceptable that the deadline has now been pushed back further to 2027. This delay is symptomatic of the wider problem facing the majority of prisons across the country.”
Tory MSP Russell Findlay said: “Dangerous overcrowding in Scotland’s jails is a direct result of the SNP’s failure to properly fund the prison service, build new establishments to deadline and tackle the court backlog.
“These damning revelations come just weeks after the boss of Scotland’s biggest prison warned that a catastrophe was a question of when not if.”
The Scottish Prison Service’s most up-to-date figures also showed ten prisons operating at more than 100pc capacity.
An SPS spokesperson said: “We have a population which is not only rapidly increasing, but also far more complex.”
“The complexity is driven by the increasing proportion of those in our care who have to be accommodated separately due to their legal status (remand or convicted), sex, age or offending history, for example, those with a history of sexual offending and individuals with links to Serious and Organised Crime.
“This complexity is further illustrated by the increase in demand for health and social care services across the prison estate in recent years, partly due to our ageing population.
“Many of our establishments are full beyond their design capacity. This increasingly restricts our staff’s ability to do the quality work that supports people’s personal development, rehabilitation, and chances of a successful reintegration into the community upon liberation.”
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