Scottish Prison Population Projections

4th June 2023

The Scottish Government has published its latest projections for the Scottish Prisons Population.

The following are extracts from the report with a link to the full report at the bottom of this page.

Key Points
The latest prison population projections to September 2023 show that:
• The overall prison population in Scotland is highly likely to either remain stable or rise slightly between April and September 2023, with a projected range of between 7,300 and 8,050 for the average daily prison population in September 2023. As at 1st April 2023, the prison population was around 7,500.

• It is highly likely that the remand population will either remain stable or decrease between April and September 2023. If it decreases as a result of enhanced monthly case conclusions, this may contribute to an increased sentenced population as more individuals transition from remand.

• It is highly likely that the sentenced population will either remain stable or rise slightly; it may rise if the overall rate of transition from remand to the sentenced population increases or if there is a greater inflow of individuals directly from the community to the sentenced population.

There is likely to be a degree of uncertainty in the prison population projections over the next six months due to a number of factors, including variability in both court demand and throughput.

Background
Up to March 2020, the Scottish Government produced short-term prison population projections using time-series based forecasting methods applied to prison population trends. These projections were based on ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) models, which are commonly used in other European jurisdictions. ARIMA projections are based on historical trends in the average monthly prison population and indicate the likely trajectory of the population size should trends in crime and justice remain stable. As ARIMA forecasting extrapolates from historical data, it cannot model changes to the prison population that are not already reflected in past trends. Hence, following the rapid large-scale changes which occurred in the criminal justice system during the Covid-2 19 pandemic, ARIMA modelling was no longer considered appropriate for short term prison population projections.

The pandemic has had profound impacts on justice system activity (e.g., court capacity and throughput) and the flows (e.g., remand arrivals and departures, sentence arrivals and departures) impacting on the prison population. Therefore, the Scottish Government has recognised the need to develop alternative projection models that take into account how the system activity and flows that drive the prison population are likely to change, and use
these to estimate short-term changes in the population. To that end, in consultation with justice partners, the development of microsimulation scenario modelling of the prison population has been undertaken since 2021. This approach is more appropriate for modelling the prison population post-pandemic and through the initial recovery period.

Figure 2 shows that since 2019-20 there have been substantial changes to the total, remand, and sentenced populations during and after the pandemic:
• The average daily prison population fell sharply from around 8,000 to just under 7,000 between March 2020 and June 2020, rising quickly thereafter to around 7,400 in September 2020 then remaining relatively stable until early 2023 (it was around 7,500 on 1st April 2023).
• The average daily remand population dropped from above 1,500 to just over 1,100 between March and April 2020, then increased rapidly to around 2,000 in September 2020. During 2021 the remand population continued to rise, albeit much more slowly. After initially continuing to increase in early 2022 (reaching a peak of nearly 2,300 on 1st February 2022) the remand population then decreased gradually (other than around December 2022/January 2023) over the next year, reaching just over 2,100 on 1st April 2023.

The Structure of the Criminal Courts
There are three types of courts which can hear criminal cases in Scotland: the High Court, Sheriff Court, and the Justice of the Peace Court. The High Court hears the most serious cases, including all cases of rape and murder. The Sheriff Court can hear all other criminal cases. The Justice of the Peace court hears minor summary cases.

Criminal cases proceed in court in either a Summary prosecution (starting with a new case calling in the Sheriff Summary or Justice of the Peace court) or a Solemn prosecution (which begins with a new "Solemn Petition" case calling in the Sheriff court). Solemn prosecutions are for more serious criminal charges and would involve a jury when heard at a trial held in either the Sheriff Solemn court or High Court.
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Custodial Sentencing Powers
The following overview of the different custodial sentencing powers of Scottish courts illustrates one of the factors differentiating the court types:
• the maximum prison sentence a Justice of the Peace court can impose is up to 60 days.
• the Sheriff in a Summary case can sentence an accused person up to 12 months in prison, whereas the Sheriff in a Solemn case can sentence an accused person up to 5 years in prison.
• there is no limit on the length of prison sentence the High Court can impose. Since the end of June 2019 there has been a statutory presumption in terms of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 against the imposition of a custodial sentence of less than 12 months. This is likely to mean that fewer custodial sentences will be issued by the Justice of the Peace court.

The Courts Recovery Programme
The SCTS (Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service) Courts Recovery Programme implemented additional courtrooms from September 2021 to address some of the challenges faced by the justice system. The number of Sheriff Summary trial courtrooms was increased from 33 to 43, Sheriff Solemn trial courtrooms increased from 18 to 20 and High Court trial courtrooms went from 16 to 20.
SCTS monthly management information8 shows that the national total trials scheduled across all criminal courts increased steeply, due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, by around 140% from 18,100 in April 2020 to over 43,600 at its peak in January 2022. It then fell substantially to 28,000 at the end of February 2023. However, whilst the number of Sheriff Summary procedure courts scheduled trials reduced between January 2022 and February 2023, they increased in Sheriff Solemn9 and High Court10 by 9% and 28% respectively. Furthermore, since the pandemic, the number of scheduled trials in Sheriff Solemn grew by over 380% from around 500 in April 2020 to 2,400 in February 2023.
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The scheduled trials in High Court grew by nearly 75% from 390 in April 2020 to 680 in February 2023. For more information on assumptions related to estimating the size of the scheduled trials backlog refer to SCTS monthly management information.

Read the full report HERE
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