Andrew McLellan, the Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, said in his annual report that the failure to tackle overcrowding was the single biggest threat to cutting reoffending.

Dr McLellan, former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said that the problem had worsened in the past year but services had not expanded to meet the greater demand. He said that prisons should focus on preventing inmates from reoffending when they were released, but overcrowding in some jails made this almost impossible.

“To make Scotland safer, prison overcrowding must be attacked and defeated as a matter of urgency,” he said. “It was in last year’s annual report that I said: ‘Addressing offending behaviour is perhaps the greatest casualty of prison overcrowding.’ One year later, overcrowding is worse . . . Almost invariably, prison staff and prisoners agree with each other that it is the most important issue confronting their prison.”

It emerged this year that Scotland’s prison population had reached its highest level, with official figures showing that there were 6,523 people in jail last year — a 2 per cent rise on the previous year.

The number of women prisoners has also hit a record high, rising by 7 per cent from 277 in 2002 to 297 in 2003.

Dr McLellan said that the need for keeping children out of trouble and the need for keeping people out of prison were the most powerful, urgent lessons he had learnt in the past two years.

“The more overcrowded a prison is, the more unlikely it is that a prisoner will have full access to opportunities for exercise and recreation. The facilities which provide the services to the prison do not grow larger when the prison becomes overcrowded. The more prisoners there are, the less there is of nearly everything for everyone,” he said.

“The impact of the best strategies in the best prisons carried out by the best staff is hopelessly weakened by overcrowding.”

Responding to the report, Cathy Jamieson, the Scottish Executive Justice Minister, said that there was no short-term fix but that investment, rehabilitation and community sentencing were all key factors.

She said: “We need solutions that extend beyond the prison walls. The use of electronic monitoring for low-risk offenders and drug treatment and testing orders also offer effective diversions from jail.”

She added that these were not soft options but stringent measures that allowed offenders to reorientate and reintegrate themselves.

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