Deaths in Prison Custody in Scotland 2012-2022

12. Conclusion

This report marks the first in a series of data and evidence publications that will be produced by the DiPCAG in the coming year. This first report has presented a high level overview of the data previously published by the Scottish Prison Service on deaths in prison custody between 2012 and 2022. Overall, the analysis shows that there has been an increase in the number of deaths occurring in prison custody over the period analysed.

The report also estimated death rates per 1,000 prison population based on two measures of the prison population applied in the official national prison statistics - i) the total number of individuals that experienced imprisonment at any point during the year and ii) the average daily prison population. The analysis showed that, whilst both measures of death rates have fluctuated over the time period considered, overall both have been rising.

The increasing death rates appear to be due to a number of factors including an aging prison population leading to increasing deaths from disease and illness and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The analysis also showed that the majority of deaths in prison occurred amongst men and those in the sentenced population. Almost half of deaths occurred amongst people who had been in their most recent prison establishment for less than one year. In assessing cause of death, the analysis showed that deaths attributed to disease, illness and natural causes accounted for the majority of deaths over the period – with marked increase in the pandemic years.

In line with the make-up of the overall prison population, the analysis also showed that the majority of people who died in custody and whose residential address was known, had arrived into custody from a residential address in one of Scotland’s most deprived areas.

Further Planned Analysis

As noted throughout the report, there are a number of areas where it was difficult to draw any clear observations or conclusions on patterns or trends which therefore warrants further detailed exploration and investigation.

For example, the very small number of women dying makes analysing deaths in custody by gender difficult. It is envisaged that future work could focus on examining whether or not there are meaningful differences in the deaths of men and women, taking into account other qualitative evidence.

It would also be helpful to examine in greater depth the role that age and an aging prison population, the incidence of pre-existing health conditions and legal status may have on the likelihood of dying in prison custody. Similarly, additional analysis and understanding of the impact of other individual factors such as adverse childhood experiences, levels of deprivation and pre-custodial circumstances, and length of custodial sentence would also help us better understand the factors that may be associated with deaths in prison custody including causes of death.

As already noted earlier in the report, following on from this report, the DiPCAG will undertake further analysis led by the NRS which will examine cause of death in custody in greater detail including providing comparisons to trends in the general population accounting for the age distribution.

It is also anticipated that further analysis using the official national prison statistics will also be undertaken in the coming months, which will consider the full custodial journey of individuals who have died in custody including examining in full their whole time spent in prison custody and possible movement across the different establishments.