Chamber and committees

I will save my other questions for later, if we have time.

You might need a pen and paper for this question, which is a question about the prison population that we should have perhaps covered at the beginning. I am keen to hear how you forecast the model for that and what the forecasts look like. I appreciate that you are a demand-led service. The reason that you might need a pen and paper is that the statistics are quite stark; there is a backlog in the courts of more than 50,000 cases and we have heard evidence this morning that there will be a 50 per cent increase in indictments over the next two years. We know that 70 per cent of High Court cases relate to serious sexual crimes, and it is natural to assume that non-custodial sentences might not be the outcome for such cases. Against that backdrop, do you expect that the prison population in Scotland is likely to massively increase over the next five years and, if so, by how much?

Presumably, that is capital underspend on new-build projects that are going beyond their expected timescales, but we know that those projects are also going over budget—HMP Inverness, for example—so that does not quite tally. Surely that relates only to the capital budget on new build? We know that there is quite heavy underinvestment in the area of prison estates, and I will come on to that with some specifics. Why are you, in effect, saying to the Government “We will be spending less than we forecast this year”, given that we know that so many projects will still require spending?

I am sorry to push on this, but it is really important from a budget point of view.

Surely, as a service, you must have numbers. I appreciate that there are lots of moving parts and lots of known unknowns, but there are also the knowns, some of which have been expressed today. We know the reoffending statistics, for example; we know how many people end up back in custody within one, two, three or four years of leaving it. There are trends and statistics that you can draw on.

You have limited capacity—a limited amount of space and a limited number of people who you can hold in the system—so surely some modelling must have been done in order to know whether you will reach that capacity at some point and, when you do, what happens then. That is so important, because we know that we are 10 or 15 years away from having new prisons in some parts of Scotland. That is why I am pushing for the forecasting.

Are we going to hit record highs in the prison population, and is there physically enough space to accommodate all the people you are asked to keep under your care?

That sort of does not answer the question, but I appreciate the reasons why you cannot.

I will try to make my question clearer. There has been a year-on-year increase in the number of diversions from prosecution—there are arguments for and against the approach, but that is not the point of my question. There has also been a year-on-year increase in the number of people who, sadly, have died as a result of drug use. The number of diversions doubled from 500 to 1,000 in one year alone, which is a substantial increase. Is it too early to say whether the policy is working, from a public health point of view, or do we have sufficient data to make a correlation between the policy and the health outcomes?

I thank everyone who has spoken. I know that we do not have a huge amount of time left.

A number of times, people have mentioned the legislative framework that operates in the UK and, specifically, in Scotland, given that we have two very separate legal systems. I have a question for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. The number of charges for the offence of possession has roughly stayed the same over the past five years—the statistics show a marginal increase from 9,700 to 10,000. However, five years ago, the number of diversions was very low—there were about 88—and there has clearly been a big shift in policy towards diversion, because last year there were more than 1,000.

Given that there has been a dramatic increase in diversions but the sad roll call of drug fatalities has also increased year on year, can we draw any conclusions about the success of the diversion concept in reducing overall harm and death from drugs in Scotland? Is there a correlation to be made there? In other words, has the policy been a success?

Thank you for that illustration. We all welcome any positive outcomes from such interventions.

Is there a role for the Crown Office to play in analysing what happens next? We often focus on the discussion about diversion but not necessarily on what we are diverting people to and the success of those programmes. Do we know how many of the 500 people who went through a diversion from prosecution in 2019-20 had a successful outcome? Do we know what percentage of them attended rehabilitation? Do we know how many of them reoffended or were back in the system and were included in the figure of 1,000 the following year? What sort of analysis does the Crown Office do on the continued monitoring of people who are diverted from prosecution?

My final question relates to a point that Peter Krykant raised. Not everyone who is stopped by police and who is involved in a single-charge possession case or commits a first-time possession offence would necessarily be classed as someone with an addiction. They might be recreational drug users and might not be suitable for the sort of diversion programmes that other witnesses have referred to.

What is the advice to police in that respect? How does the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service differentiate and decide or analyse whether someone who is stopped and charged with possession would benefit from full treatment, diversion and rehabilitation or is simply a recreational drug user who is breaking the law? There might be a fine line between the two.

I wonder whether Police Scotland would like to answer the same question.