Scotland is addressing critical prison overcrowding by enacting new legislation allowing nearly 400 inmates to be released early if they served 40% of their sentences. This initiative, passed to mitigate chronic overcrowding, excludes those convicted of domestic and sexual offenses. The prisons, exceeding their 8,000 inmate capacity, face issues like violence and drug problems, mainly brought by inmates with pre-existing habits. Scottish Justice Secretary Angela Constance emphasizes the need to prioritize dangerous offenders within limited space as courts experience significant backlogs from the pandemic, raising nationwide concerns about prison conditions.
Hundreds of inmates are soon to be released from jail in Scotland as new legislation designed to relieve prison overcrowding comes into force.
Scotland's jails are operating well above their intended capacity of around 8,000 total inmates, and problems with violence, gangs and contraband are becoming increasingly difficult to combat.
The Scottish Justice Secretary Angela Constance has said that the overcrowding issue must be resolved in order to make room for dangerous offenders as opposed to non-violent ones convicted of relatively minor crimes.
Overcrowding has become an increasingly urgent problem in the UK as a whole, as has a general long-term deterioration in prison conditions.
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