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The Scottish Government believes that custodial sentences should be reserved for those individuals whose offences are so serious that prison is the only appropriate form of punishment, and for those who pose a risk of serious harm. We recognise however that for individuals who do not fall into these categories, short-term sentences do not help either to rehabilitate or to reduce the risk of reoffending.

The proposal to strengthen the presumption against short periods of imprisonment is only one part of our on-going and wide-ranging work designed to move away from a reliance on custody and focus on robust community sentences that promote rehabilitation. Evidence demonstrates that individuals released from a custodial sentence of 6 months or less are reconvicted more than twice as often as those given a Community Payback Order.

We are currently not able to provide the exact answer to this question, because the dataset used for the Reconvictions in Scotland publication is not held in a way that would allow such an analysis. However, we can provide the number of reconvictions for each cohort from 2010-11 to 2013-14 by custodial sentence/community sentence. Please find in the following table:

Reconvictions and Sentencing, 2011-12 to 2013-14 cohorts

1. Please note that this is not a sub-set of the number reconvicted, as this counts every conviction in the 12 months after the index conviction. Some people will receive multiple convictions over the course of a year. Please also note that there are other sentence types not included here.

2. 'Community Sentence' refers to Restriction of Liberty Orders, Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, Community Service Orders, Probation Orders and Community Payback Orders (CPOs).

The answer provided for question S5W-06096 included the most recent published reconviction rates, published in Reconviction Rates in Scotland: 2013-14 Offender Cohort published in May 2016.

Reconviction Rates are calculated as the percentage of offenders in a cohort who go on to reoffend within a year from their non-custodial conviction or release from a custodial sentence. Therefore the most recent publication looked at the reconviction rate for the 2013-14 cohort, whose reconvictions occurred in 2014-15. Reconviction rates for the 2014-15 cohort are due to be published in April this year, 2015-16 in spring 2018 and 2016-17 in spring 2019.

The Scottish Government remains in discussion with the relevant stakeholders on how best to address the concerns raised by respondents to the consultation in relation to the potential consequences of any extension to the presumption. It would not be appropriate at this stage to prejudge the outcome of those discussions.

I had regular meetings throughout 2016 with the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to discuss a range of operational matters which would include workforce planning issues. These meetings will continue in 2017 and the last one took place on 12 January 2017.

Scottish Government Justice officials also meet with staff from Scottish Prison Service on a regular basis to discuss a variety of related prison policy and operational issues.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

Information relating to deaths in custody is published on the SPS website. A link to the website is provided here:

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Information/PrisonerDeaths.aspx

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

The Scottish Prison Service does not anticipate that any posts will remain unfilled following the 2017-18 budget settlement, except for any normal vacancies which are associated with the balancing of workforce and operational demands.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

SPS does not routinely publish such reports, and there are no plans to do so on this occasion.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

The following table shows the occupancy levels of each establishment when measured against capacity.

Both the design capacity and operational capacity of establishments are different and can change for reasons of policy, maintenance and changing operational requirements.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) does not have an issue with recruitment and retention of Prison Officers. SPS receive on average 1,600 applications for the role of Prison Officer each year with around 150 available jobs.

SPS use a variety of advertising approaches to increase the diversity of their applicant pool. Approaches include, engagement with higher and further education, close working with armed forces careers partners as well as local/national media advertising.

SPS attracts highly skilled and motivated individuals and with high levels of interest our approach has proved to be very successful.