§ Mr. Home Robertsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the quantity and quality of prison accommodation in Scotland and on the availability of non-custodial sentences.
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonThe design capacity of Scottish penal establishments is currently 5,600 places, a number of which—including some provided at Shotts this year—are at present temporarily out of use as a result of damage by inmates in recent incidents. The total includes some 2,300 places which have access to night sanitation or integral sanitation. Some 1,900 places were provided in the last 20 years.
Community service and probation are the two main non-custodial disposals available to the courts. Both schemes are managed by the local authority social work departments who receive in respect of community service a specific grant from central Government towards the running costs. Probation costs are included in the rate support grant.
During 1985, 2,982 probation and 2,733 community service orders were made. The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1987 reduced the minimum period for which a probation order can be made from 12 to six months and enabled a condition requiring an offender to pay compensation to be included in a probation order.
§ Mr. Home Robertsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what proportion of the population of Scotland is in prison; how that figure compares with that in other European countries; and if he will make a statement.
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§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonOn 20 October the actual population of penal establishments in Scotland was 5,409 (approximately 106 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants in Scotland).
Statistics for average prison population per 100,000 inhabitants for Scotland, England and Wales and European countries which are members of the Council of Europe are given in an article in "Home Office Research and Planning Unit Bulletin No. 23, 1987", a copy of which is available in the Library. This article explains the difficulties of making direct international comparisons because of differences in the legal and administrative systems from which these statistics are derived.