'Scandal' as Scottish jails quarter-filled with remand prisoners waiting trial or sentencing
dailyrecord.co.ukThe number of inmates in Scottish prisons who have neither been tried or sentenced has reached a record level. Official figures show that on an average day in the last 12 months a quarter of all prisoners in jail were on remand - double the number in March 2020.
Prison reform campaigners branded the figure a "scandal" while the Lib Dems said SNP ministers had allowed the justice system to effectively grind to a halt.
The average daily prisoner population for 2021-22 was 7,504 – up from 7,339 the previous year. But the average number of remand prisoners – those awaiting either trial or sentencing – increased by about 14 per cent from 1,634 in 2020-21 to 1,862.
Howard League Scotland, which campaigns for prison reform, said the country was "completely out of step" with the rest of the UK and Europe when it came to the use of remand.
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