Short-term prisoner release point: responses to targeted consultation

Response from Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership

This response provides feedback from a range of services including Prison Healthcare Services, Justice Social Work Services and a range of community justice partner agencies within the Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership area.

In addition to the comments specifically from local services, Social Work Services identified the issues set out by Social Work Scotland in their response and stated their support for these views.

Question 1: What are your views on changing the release point for certain short-term prisoners to 30%?

Whilst there was a view that this will benefit offenders and services in the long run. It is considered that this will effectively be a continuation of the emergency releases happening since November. Once the initial tranche is completed it will become everyday practice for services with lower numbers of release over time. However, staff would like to see the feedback/concerns raised throughout Tranches 1-5 acknowledged and actions to prevent these put in place

The main concerns raised by Prison Healthcare services relate to the initially increased volume of releases and services ability to safely and effectively manage the associated clinical workload. Specifically:

• Screening capacity: A higher number of early releases will significantly increase demand for timely health screens and assessments. This poses a risk to safe and consistent clinical decision making, particularly where complex physical and mental health needs are involved.
• Impact on community referrals: Coordinating urgent community referrals at short notice will place additional pressure on already stretched teams and may lead to delays in establishing appropriate continuity of care.
• Service impact and delays: Increased release activity is likely to cause delays in core prison healthcare functions—including triage, treatment room activity, SRT, and mental health reviews—as staff are redirected to urgent release related tasks.
• GP/ANP/pharmacy workload: Medication reviews, preparation of discharge prescriptions, and ensuring safe medicines reconciliation are already time intensive processes. A sudden rise in volume risks creating bottlenecks, with potential safety implications and knock on delays across the wider service.
• From a psychological perspective, shorter sentences and quicker progression through the system reduce the likelihood that individuals will be able to access psychological therapies. As a result, they may miss the opportunity to receive support for underlying psychological difficulties that may have contributed to their offending behaviour. They also lose the chance to develop adaptive coping skills that could help them manage life in the community more effectively and in healthier ways.
• However, spending more time in the community and less time in custody may ultimately have a more positive impact on an individual’s overall mental health.
• Concern from the staff group was that without some additional recurring resource or transitional planning, the proposed change could compromise their ability to maintain safe and sustainable healthcare delivery within the establishment.
• Shorter sentences and urgent, sudden, releases have a significant impact on not only what psychology interventions can be carried out, but also on any medication issues; establishing on psychotropic medication and cross titration, as this can often take a number of months. It will also exacerbate current issues with establishing follow up care by community services.
• A final point raised was that the temporary nature of some funding for prison healthcare staffing meant that there were already ongoing challenges meeting current demand in a sustainable way.

Feedback from Justice social Work Services was in line with the Social Work Scotland response; with some additional comments:

• Custody is disruptive to the individual as well as the services they are involved with including health, housing, benefits as well as their family and wider relationships. Reducing sentences even further puts pressure on services to reestablish their support to the individuals within a short time period.
• It also fails to mention the Judiciaries contribution to the issues – despite the PASS, bail and EM being in place there is low uptake nationally. The early releases places additionality on social work and partners without the matching of resource/finance to support it. Albeit the numbers are not exceptionally high.

Question 2: What are your views on excluding those serving sentences for domestic abuse and sexual offences?

Some expressed a view that the current scheme was too lenient given trauma from domestic abuse and sexual assault does not end halfway through a sentence. This gap between the early release scheme timeline and the ongoing nature of victim recovery can feel like abandonment. Even though the proposed or stated exclusion from earlier release is intended to protect those victims as argued, the current halfway release rule can make many people feel vulnerable, abandoned, and unprotected. As such there was widespread support for excluding domestic abuse and sexual offences from the proposed scheme.

Question 6: Do you have any other comments

Given the timeframe for responding, the above comments are provided as a range of views from professional staff groups working within the current system and do not represent a single view being put forward by the Falkirk Health and Social Care Partnership.