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I guess that, from a practical point of view, the families of those in prisons will most likely want to know what the current status is of that prison, which would be helpful for them.

I turn to my other question. From the responses that we have had, there seems to be support for extending the instrument by six months. Why six months? Is that in keeping with what the Parliament is doing with coronavirus measures? If the Parliament is legislating to end coronavirus measures for the wider public, why is there still a need for them to be extended in this case? What is so different about the prison environment that you need to keep extending the powers by six months, while we are ending them or do not really see the need to extend them for that long? Do you think that you will be coming back in another six months, asking for the powers again? I know that we do not know what will happen with the virus, but the measures seem like an endless iteration of what were only just temporary powers two years ago.

Thank you.

I will bring in Marsha Scott in a minute. The bad news, unfortunately, is that the numbers speak for themselves. Of the 348 people who were released early under the emergency power, 142 reoffended within six months. I do not know the specifics of the cases—I am sure that we can find that information—but I suspect that a chunk of them will involve domestic abuse or gender-based violence. That is a worry. There was a public health emergency, and we had to release people from prison, but they went on to reoffend when, in normal circumstances, they would still have been serving their sentences. In this instance, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, unfortunately. That said, I would be grateful if you could share with the committee any anecdotal evidence of such cases that you might come across.

Dr Scott, can you give us your views on the general concept of early release and use of the emergency power?

I have a two-part question about early release.

As you know, short-term prisoners in Scotland must be released after serving half their sentence. Long-term prisoners may be released after serving half their sentence, subject to decisions by the Parole Board for Scotland. First, what do you think about that concept?

Secondly, the emergency provisions in the coronavirus legislation gave the Scottish Government the ability to release prisoners earlier than the mandatory time limits. The bill, as I said in my previous question, seeks to make those temporary provisions more permanent features of the justice system. Is that appropriate? Would you prefer the provisions not to be permanent in legislation? I think that we all agree that some good justice system reforms have come from the Covid pandemic; we have already talked about those. However, we might not want that provision to become a permanent feature of the system.

Perhaps Kate Wallace can start.

The question was about the ability to release people even earlier than halfway through their sentence. That was a temporary measure to deal with the public health emergency of the pandemic, but the bill will make the measure permanent. What is your view on that?

They are not just challenges. It sounds as though they are almost breaching international law. I refer to the paper from HMCIPS, which stated:

“Staff prisoner relations and the tolerance of prisoners to the very restricted regime has been ... positive to date”—

perhaps not in every case, but that is the overarching situation—

“but the continuation of heavy restrictions risks an adverse reaction.”

That is a very real reaction, and we have already seen the consequence of that. We already know of attacks on prison officers, for example, and there is a distinct possibility that the levels of tension could rise. Is there any sense of the prison population questioning why the wider population of the world is moving forward while they are still under the restrictive measures that were imposed under the emergency?

On the correspondence from the SPS in response to our questions, my understanding is that the service gave us figures only for the four weeks following the changes to the rules on 13 December. That is only one month of data, so we should request continued updates. Also, because that was the Christmas period, there would have been abnormal volumes of mail throughout the month.

It is notable that 48 per cent of correspondence was photocopied and passed on. I do not know whether that is good or bad. I guess that some people understood that all mail would be photocopied and others thought that it would be selected depending on the evaluation of risk. It is hard to gauge whether the figure is good, bad or indifferent, so it would be helpful to have some context.

The more interesting figure is on how many pieces of mail tested positive. Because 12 per cent of mail that went through the Rapiscan machine tested positive, it sounds as though it would be a wise move on our part to push for photocopying. I would be keen, as we move forward, to see what effect that has on the number of items that test positive over the months, and whether the number goes down as people reduce the risk that they take in sending substances through the mail.

Equally, it would be naive to think that a reduction means that drugs are being eliminated from prisons. Will there be a change in the type of drugs that get into prison or the methods of getting them there? It is probably too early to say, and I appreciate that the Government needs more time, but when we hear from the Government—perhaps before the summer recess—it would be interesting to hear whether people in the illicit sector have found new and innovative ways of getting drugs into prisons, and to hear what those drugs are. As we know, methods and products have changed over the years. It is fair to say that that will continue to be the case, so we should keep a watching eye on that.

Good morning, everyone. My colleague Katy Clark has already covered this area quite well, and I get the impression that this is a necessary evil, given the two options in front of us. No one wants cases to be timed out, so there must be a mechanism for extending them. Historically, as you will know, people had to apply for an extension, whereas under the emergency procedure, the extension was automatic.

The bill makes permanent some of the temporary features that were brought in during Covid. Do you have any concerns about the extension of the limits to 17 or 18 months for solemn cases and the other extension for summary cases? Would you rather that they were time-limited automatic extensions and that the limits would revert back to their original 11 or 12 months? If so, at what point in the future would you like that to happen?

Sorry, yes—I should have made that clear.

That was a reactive measure in response to an emergency. There was not even a testing regime in place, so you were dealing with what you had within months of the pandemic starting. We are two years on from that now, of course, in a very different world, and the measures before us are being proposed for the future, not for today.

Referring to my original question, what criteria should be used in that respect? We have to go back to the Government and say what we think is right or wrong about the bill. If the measures are only about the pandemic, the health situation in the prison, the prison population or how many people are in a cell, and less about the type of prisoner or how long is left on their sentence, what sort of people were being released, from your point of view, and was it entirely appropriate that they were released early? Would we do something differently next time? Ultimately, the Government will have to rewrite the rules for future pandemics or for variations of this one.