Estimate of prison population: FOI release

Information requested

1. The estimated proportion of the sentenced prison population that is classified as a ‘short-term’ prisoner – that is to say they were sentenced to less than four years. Please provide the latest estimate the Scottish Government holds and if the Scottish Government holds a numerical estimate of this prison population please provide it.

2. The estimated proportion of the sentenced prison population that is classified as a ‘long-term’ prisoner – that is to say they were sentenced to four years or more. Please provide the latest estimate the Scottish Government holds and if the Scottish Government holds a numerical estimate of this prison population please provide it.

3. An estimate of the average length of stay (in days) for short-term prisoners in Scottish prisons. Please provide the latest estimate the Scottish Government holds either in days or in months/years if providing it in days is not possible.

4. An estimate of the average length of stay (in days) for long-term prisoners in Scottish prisons. Please provide the latest estimate the Scottish Government holds either in days or in months/years if providing it in days is not possible.

Response

The Scottish Government have recently developed a longitudinal dataset from which the official statistics on the prison population in Scotland are derived. Using this dataset, we are able to provide information on some elements of your request which are provided in Annex A below. However, as noted in Annex A, we do not hold some of the information requested.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you.

Annex A: Responses to Questions

1/2. The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested.

As you may be aware, individuals held in custody are often serving multiple custodial sentences. Unfortunately, where this is the case, there are no markers in the Scottish Government dataset to indicate whether these sentences are to be served consecutively or concurrently. As such it is not possible to determine whether an individual is managed within the custodial estate as a short- or longterm prisoner.

You may be interested to know that the Scottish Government has published prison population statistics broken down by index sentence length (i.e. the length of the single longest custodial sentence served) which are available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-prison-population-statistics-legalstatus-2019-20/pages/6/

Further information on sentencing published by the Scottish Government is provided in the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland statistical bulletin, which is available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/criminal-proceedings-scotland-2019-20/

3/4. The Scottish Government holds some of the information requested in questions 3 and 4.

As explained above, the Scottish Government does not hold the information required to determine whether an individual is managed within the custodial estate as a short- or long-term prisoner. However, from the prison population data that is held, it is possible to explore the length of stay in custody associated with departures from the sentenced population. In table 1 below, we provide the median number of days in custody for all of the departures from the sentenced population in each year from 2009-10 to 2019-20.

This is broken down by index sentence length, with ‘short index sentence’ indicating all departures associated with an index sentences of less than 4 years and ‘long index sentence’ indicating all departures associated with an index sentence of 4 years or more:

Table 1: Median days to departure from custody for short and long index sentences by year

Year	Short Index sentence		Long Index Sentence
	Median days to departure	Number of departures	Median days to departure	Number of departures
2009-10	90	12,062	1,082	604
2010-11	90	11,271	1,094	550
2011-12	91	11,154	1,175	635
2012-13	91	11,082	1,217	516
2013-14	91	10,741	1,183	584
2014-15	98	10,039	1,215	566
2015-16	100	9,596	1,217	518
2016-17	106	8,962	1,277	568
2017-18	116	8,466	1,219	497
2018-19	118	8,087	1,279	525
2019-20	137	7,560	1,100	461

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