Thank you for the opportunity to make an opening statement. The Scottish Prison Service agency framework agreement—“Scottish Prison Service Framework Document March 2016”—which is published on our website, sets out the nature and conditions of the operation of the service and its relationship with Scottish ministers and other key stakeholders.
Section 2 of the framework describes the roles and responsibilities of the key players that are responsible for the oversight and management of the organisation. The main responsibilities of ministers and the Government with regard to the agency include
“Setting the strategic objectives and related performance targets”
and
“Setting the budget for the Agency.”
For the chief executive, the overarching responsibility is described as
“the delivery of the functions”
of the Scottish Prison Service. That includes
“Ensuring that all ... financial considerations and Scottish Government guidance, including issues of propriety, regularity, efficiency and value for money, are taken into account in delivering the business of SPS”
and
“Preparing and publishing annual reports, accounts, corporate and business plans, subject to Ministerial approval.”
Put simply, the Government says what it wants to be done and gives us a sum of money with which to get it done. The role of the chief executive officer and therefore of the service as a whole is, with best endeavour, to deliver what is required with the resources allocated.
In September 1997, the then chief inspector of prisons, Sir Clive Fairweather, described Barlinnie, which was operating at 51 per cent overcapacity, as a “national disgrace”. He noted that overcrowding was
“pervading almost every part of the prison and its regime”
and that consequently for the prison there were
“health and hygiene implications”.
Roll forward to today, in October 2019, with more than 20 years in between, and Barlinnie is almost 50 per cent overcrowded and the service as a whole is more than 9 per cent overcrowded. With our current chief inspector of prisons about to publish her latest report on Barlinnie, would you or should you be surprised if she were to be critical of conditions for those living and working there, given that back story and despite the fact that, over the past 10 years, £30 million has been invested to keep the prison functioning to a reasonable standard?
The poor living and working conditions in the SPS’s Victoriana stock, which covers Barlinnie, Inverness, Perth, Dumfries and Greenock, should not shock us as a result of being newly realised or laid bare, because the issues have been with us—all of us—for a long time, through successive Governments and justice and political leaders. Those issues have been much reported on, criticised and, on occasion, condemned, by successive chief inspectors of prisons in Scotland.
The prison population is neither homogeneous nor stable; it is constantly changing. Today, the Scottish Prison Service holds an increasingly complex and difficult-to-manage population, which is often composed of groups of people who are in direct conflict with one another; those who present with a multiplicity of complex mental, social, physical and healthcare needs; those who by the nature of their offence require to be kept separate from others; those who simply cannot cope; and those who present such a level of risk and threat that their very presence has the potential to destabilize a prison in part or as a whole.
I will share some interesting facts about the prison population.