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Publication - Statistics

Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Data Report: April 2025

Published
24 April 2025
From
Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, +4 more … Minister for Victims and Community Safety, Lord Advocate, Chief Statistician, Director of Justice
Directorate
Safer Communities Directorate, +2 more … Justice Directorate, Children and Families Directorate
Topic
Communities and third sector, Law and order, Public safety and emergencies

This report contains summary statistics covering a number of important justice and safer communities areas. It is updated with the most recently published statistics.

Part of

Supporting documents

*New* The prison population rose over 2023 and 2024

In March 2025 (up until the morning of Tuesday 1st April 2025):

  • the population decreased by 168 to 8,182
  • 2,255 were on remand: 1,794 (22%) untried & 461 (6%) awaiting sentence. 5,927 (72%) were serving a sentence.
  • 57% of arrivals were untried (537 of 950), 25% awaiting sentence (235) and 19% sentenced (178)

The overall prison population has exceeded 2019-20 (pre-pandemic) levels. There was a sustained population increase in 2023, and the number of people held on remand remains at a considerably higher level than pre-pandemic. Reforms to the short term prisoner release point have resulted in reductions in specific populations in recent months.

Chart 15: Prison populations (total and remand), 2019 to 1st April 2025

The Friday prison population overall and the remand population up to March 2020. Thereafter, daily population figures are provided. The trends are described in the body text.

Friday population figures published by the Scottish Prison Service show that the prison population rose from around 7,500 in April 2018 to around 8,300 in November 2019, but fell sharply in the early days of the lockdown in 2020. This was due to a fall in arrivals to custody and the early release of prisoners.

Following a rapid growth in the remand population to September 2020, the prison population stabilised between 7,300 and 7,600 across 2020-22. However, growth over 2023 led to a higher prison population. The prison population has consistently exceeded 8,000 since the end of March 2024, reaching 8,379 on 4th March 2025.

Prison population growth was initially driven by a rise in both remand and sentenced arrivals to custody. However, while sentenced and convicted awaiting sentence arrivals continue to trend upwards, untried arrivals to remand have increased over the past few months. See the Scottish Prison Population Projections for more detail on these changing patterns.

The remand population was at its lowest point of 1,114 on 24th April 2020, but grew to over 2,000 by September 2020. Following a period of relative stability, the remand population grew further in the first half of 2023. On 14th May 2024 it peaked at 2,360. People on remand are required by law to be housed separately from sentenced prisoners.

The change in the sentenced prison population varies by sentence length, as shown in the chart below. Recent reductions in short sentence populations reflect the changes to release conditions for some short term prisoners.

Chart 16: Prison populations by overall sentence, 26th Mar 2020 to 1st April 2025

The sentenced population broken into overall sentence bands. The highest line to lowest line categories are “Long: 4 years plus” (highest line), “Short: less that 4 years”, “Life” (smoothly decreasing), “Short: one year or less”, and “Orders of Lifelong Restriction” (lowest line). The trends are described in the body text.

The populations serving short term overall sentences (less than 4 years) fell substantially and rapidly during 2020, whereas populations serving long term and indeterminate sentences remained at similar levels to pre-pandemic. Since 2022, the population with longer sentences (4+ years) has grown more or less continuously, as has the population with other indeterminate sentences other than Life (predominantly Orders of Lifelong Restriction).

The population serving life sentences has seen a small and gradual decline since 2020, which continues to date.

The population serving overall sentences of less than or equal to one year and of one to four years increased during 2023. Short-sentenced individuals were those targeted with emergency release and release threshold reform, and those are the populations that have seen the greatest fluctuations over time.

Time on Remand to Date

*New* Among the 2,255 people on remand as of the morning of Tuesday 1st April 2025, the median continuous time spent with this status to date was 69 days.

Chart 17: Banded continuous time on remand to date, percentage of remand population

The groupings of time on remand to date. The largest proportion – 32.8% or 740 people - had been there for over 140 days. 24.8% (560 people) had been on remand for 31 to 90 days. 11% (249 people) for 91 to 140 days. The remaining 706 (31.3%) had been on remand for 30 days or less.

Note: The remand population includes individuals whose trial has commenced but not concluded, as well as those awaiting commencement of a trial. As a result, the figures referenced above reflect only that an individual has held the same status for an extended period, but do not reflect the relationship between these times on remand and the ongoing court procedure(s) to which they relate.

Remand Arrival Offences

*New* There were 734 remand arrivals to prison with known offence types in March, awaiting trial or sentence for the following alleged index offences.

Chart 18: Index offence category on entry of arrivals to remand

A bar chart showing the index offences of 734 of those arriving to remand legal statuses in February. Most common was common assault, followed by crimes against public justice and serious assault and attempted murder

Note: Double-counting may occur where an individual arrives, is absent from prison for one or more nights in the month, and then returns before the end of the period. Where an individual has multiple alleged offence types in a single stint, the offence towards the top of the list in the chart is used as the index offence. Index offences in this chart are ordered by average sentence length. 

Deaths in Prison Custody

*New* There were 345 deaths in prison custody between the financial years 2012-13 and 2022-23. The annual number of deaths occurring in prison custody fluctuated between 2012-13 and 2022-23, but there has been a general upward trend. Of these deaths: 105 were due to probable suicide, 71 were due to diseases of the circulatory system, and 50 were as a result of drug misuse. There was a total of 16 deaths that involved COVID-19.

Chart 19: Number of deaths in prison custody recorded in each financial year, 2012-13 to 2022-23

A graph with a general upward trend of deaths in custody between 2012-13 and 2022-23. The highest in 2021-22 at 48.Using standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) has demonstrated that the risk of death in the male prison population has been significantly lower than in the male general population of Scotland in each year between 2012-13 and 2022-23.  In 2020-21 and 2021-22 the risk is closer to that of the general population but remains significantly lower.

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