Scotland’s most senior judges have broken their usual silence to fire a sharp warning at the SNP government over its plans to cut the prison population by releasing inmates earlier than scheduled.
The Senators of the College of Justice, who rarely wade into public debate, have come out swinging against a central part of the Scottish government’s strategy to ease overcrowding behind bars. The intervention is significant precisely because these judges almost never speak out on political matters, making their criticism all the harder for ministers to brush aside.
The Scottish government has been pushing ahead with early release measures as prisons across the country continue to strain under record numbers of inmates. Holyrood has argued that reducing the prison population is a necessary step, pointing to chronic overcrowding that has put pressure on staff and facilities alike.
But the judges are not buying it, at least not in its current form. The Senators have raised serious concerns about how the early release plans would work in practice, questioning whether the proposals are legally sound and whether they properly account for public safety and the rights of victims.
This is not the first time the SNP’s prison population strategy has run into trouble. An earlier emergency release scheme, pushed through in the summer, was met with widespread criticism after some of those freed went on to reoffend. That controversy put the government firmly on the back foot and led to a rethink of parts of the approach.
The latest pushback from the judiciary adds another layer of pressure on Justice Secretary Angela Constance, who has been tasked with finding a workable long-term solution to what everyone agrees is a genuine crisis in the Scottish prison system.
Scotland’s jail population has been hovering near record highs for months. The Scottish Prison Service has repeatedly flagged that numbers are unsustainable, with some establishments holding significantly more prisoners than they were designed for. Staff shortages have made the situation worse, and there have been growing calls from across the political spectrum for a serious rethink of how Scotland handles sentencing and incarceration.
The government’s position is that building more prisons is not the answer on its own, and that reducing unnecessary short-term sentences and managing release more carefully is the smarter route forward. That argument has some support among justice reform campaigners, who have long argued that short sentences do more harm than good.
However, critics on the opposition benches have seized on the judges’s intervention as proof that the SNP is moving too fast without thinking through the consequences. Scottish Conservative and Labour politicians have both called for a more cautious approach, with victim support groups also voicing concern that early release undermines confidence in the justice system.
The College of Justice stepping into this debate will make uncomfortable reading for the government. When Scotland’s top legal minds decide something is worth speaking out about, it tends to carry weight that a press release from an opposition party simply cannot match.
The Scottish government has said it will continue to engage with stakeholders, including the judiciary, as it develops its plans. But with judges, opposition parties and victim groups all raising red flags, the path forward is looking considerably bumpier than ministers might have hoped.