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A long-running crisis of overstuffed jails and backlogged courts has reached a critical level.
ADVERTISEMENTHundreds of inmates are soon to be released from jail in Scotland as new legislation designed to relieve prison overcrowding comes into force.Nearly 400 prisoners will walk free over the next six weeks under the law, which makes some inmates serving sentences of less than four years eligible for release after 40% of their time has been served.However, prisoners serving time for domestic abuse and sexual offences will not be eligible.The Scottish Parliament passed the law last year to address what has become a chronic prison overcrowding crisis. Scotland’s jails are operating well above their intended capacity of around 8,000 total inmates, and problems with violence, gangs and contraband are becoming increasingly difficult to combat.Drugs are a particularly serious problem in Scotland, which has long suffered the worst drug addiction crisis in Europe. Many inmates arrive with established drug habits or connections to gangs operating both inside and outside prison walls.Several hundred inmates were also released early from Scottish jails last year, but new sentencings soon erased the resulting reduction in the prison population.The Scottish Justice Secretary Angela Constance has said that the overcrowding issue must be resolved in order to make room for dangerous offenders as opposed to non-violent ones convicted of relatively minor crimes. There is also a backlog of prisoners awaiting trial and sentencing in Scotland’s courts, which have been overloaded with cases since the COVID-19 pandemic.Overcrowding has become an increasingly urgent problem in the UK as a whole, as has a general long-term deterioration in prison conditions — with high-profile cases of escape and prison staff misconduct calling more public attention to the issue.In September 2023, former soldier Daniel Khalife briefly escaped from HMP Wandsworth, one of the country’s largest prisons, underneath a delivery truck. The same prison saw another major scandal last year when a video leaked showing a female prison officer having sex with an inmate in his cell.The officer, who was arrested while trying to leave the UK, has since been sentenced to jail herself.
