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This article reviews the procedures for the management of drug misuse in Scottish prisons 10 years after the introduction of the legislative framework permitting the introduction of mandatory drug testing (MDT). In April 2005 the Scottish Prison Service announced its decision to discontinue mandatory random drug tests (MRDTs) in Scottish prisons. This decision was not without controversy and was met by criticisms in the media that the prison service had given up on the fight against controlling substance abuse among inmates within Scottish prisons. This research examines the reality of the problem and some of the issues that have arisen over the past 10 years. The current usage of mandatory drug testing and some possible future implications of its usage are researched through the realistic but forward‐looking approach currently utilised at Edinburgh prison.

Industrial relations problems in the UK Prison Service are part of the wider crisis within the penal system over the past 30 years, from the era of the Mountbatten Report of 1966 to the Woolf Report of 1990, and beyond. Incidents and disputes, concerning both industrial relations and the problems of prison regimes, attract wide media reporting, not all of it accurate. Attempts to redress this selectivity, and to demonstrate the complex linkages between industrial relations and the administration, management and reform of the penal system. Focusing mainly on the Home Office Prison Service (HOPS), and on the three main trade unions, highlights the differing political goals of the prison service, and the perpetual turmoil without clear purpose in which the principal actors seem to be enmeshed.

The purpose of this paper is to foreground and analyse the views of people in custody about the management of the COVID-19 pandemic within the Scottish Prison Estate. The project is unique in using a correspondence participatory action methodology to engage with a group of people in custody at one Scottish prison.

At the time of ethical approval (early April 2020), all face-to-face research projects facilitated by the Scottish Prison Service were paused. In response to these methodological challenges, a participatory correspondence methodology was designed to allow people in custody to influence the direction of this project by suggesting research questions and themes. Eight participants were selected due to previous participation in research projects at one Scottish prison. All participants were adult males and serving long-term sentences. After consent was given via post, eight letters were distributed to participants with questions about their COVID-19 experiences. Methodologically, this project illustrates the potential for correspondence methods to facilitate insights into life in custody during what emerges as a particularly challenging time.

Participant suggested questions were used across six subsequent letters to elicit unique insights into the COVID-19 pandemic, of lockdown and subsequent easing of lockdown conditions in custody. The main project findings relate to challenges that the participants faced in relation to communication, feelings of heightened isolation and detachment from family, friends and the normal rhythms of life in prison. Analysis of letters provides unique insights into the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic in custody enhanced the pains of imprisonment, increasing the “tightness”, “depth” and “weight” of participants’ time in custody.

This paper is methodologically, epistemologically and theoretically original in foregrounding the views of people in custody about the management of COVID-19 in prison and using a correspondence participatory action research method. The conclusion considers the extent to which views from what might be considered the bottom of hierarchies of power within prison settings are able to influence the direction of prison policy around the management of COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Buprenorphine (Subutex) was piloted in two Scottish prisons between 2004 and 2006 and consequently used within other penal establishments in Scotland. This 2007 qualitative study aimed to explore the use of Subutex and its associated effects on 14 participants on detoxification programmes.

All participants were male, aged from 21 to 44 years with prison sentences ranging from a few months to life imprisonment. Buprenorphine was unavailable to female prisoners at the time of this study. Participants were recruited from seven Scottish prisons. All 14 participants were on detoxification programmes, each was prescribed Subutex, and each was selected from a larger investigation that included both those undergoing detoxification and maintenance (n=21). All participants had previously also used methadone on previous detoxification programmes.

It can be concluded that the majority of detoxification participants within this study indicated that Subutex was a more effective treatment than methadone as it helped reduce craving, eased the process of withdrawal and improved sleeping patterns. In addition, the majority of participants noted higher levels of motivation and the ability to set goals towards obtaining an improved quality of life.

This study provides an alternative perspective to the use of Subutex within prison settings, when compared with results from previous quantitative studies reported. The study also highlights inconsistencies drawn from studies in this area, which may be an artefact of study design. It is recommended that further qualitative studies be conducted to explore further this alternative perspective. Finally, the issue of methodological approach taken should be addressed within the context of a related, but independent, research forum.

This paper aims to explore smokefree prison policy, from the perspective of people in custody in Scotland.

In total, 77 people in custody in Scotland were interviewed in the period leading up to implementation of a nationwide prison smokefree policy. Data were thematically analysed to identify the diversity of views and experiences.

Participants described a widespread awareness in prisons of plans to implement a smokefree policy from 30 November 2018. Opinions about smokefree prisons varied among participants based on perceptions of the fairness, and anticipated positive and negative consequences of removing tobacco from prisons. At the time of the interviews, people in custody were responding to the impending smokefree policy, either by proactively preparing for the smokefree rule change or by deploying avoidance strategies. Participants described opportunities and challenges for implementing smokefree policy in prisons across three main themes: the role of smoking in prison, prison smoking cessation services and motivations for quitting smoking among people in custody.

This study exploring smokefree prisons from the perspectives of people in custody has several novel features which extend the evidence base. The findings highlight measures for jurisdictions to consider when planning to prohibit smoking in their prisons in the future. These include the need for evidence-based smoking cessation support in advance of smokefree policy, effective communication campaigns, consideration of broader structural determinants of health in prison and ongoing measures to reduce rates of return to smoking post release.

Alcohol misuse is internationally recognised as a major public health problem. The link between alcohol and crime is strong and offenders have a higher prevalence of alcohol problems when compared with the general population. Alcohol‐related crime is estimated to cost the Scottish economy over £700 m per annum. The purpose of this paper is to measure the nature and prevalence of Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs) in adult male prisoners on remand in a prison in Scotland.

Using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) screening tool, all new remand prisoners were screened over a two week period.

Prevalence of alcohol problems within the sample was high: 73 per cent of the sample was identified with an AUD, with 43 per cent with scores indicating possible alcohol dependence.

This is the first study to focus solely on a remand prisoner population and the results show high levels of need. The criminal justice setting is ideally placed to identify and treat alcohol problems in this hard to reach population.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the information behaviours of prisoners, providing insight into their information needs and information-seeking preferences, and the factors influencing their behaviours; to inform education and rehabilitation programmes.

The paper is an in-depth qualitative study. The theoretical framework was provided via Chatman’s (1996) concepts of information poverty. Participants were adult male prisoners in a Scottish maximum security prison, and prison staff. Data collection method was semi-structured interviews.

Prisoners have a broad range of information needs, many sensitive and many unmet. Interpersonal information sources are predominantly used due to a combination of natural preference and restricted access to other information sources. Issues of stigma and trust influence information behaviours. Further issues include restrictive social norms, and disinformation to incite violence. A significant degree of risk is therefore inherent within interpersonal information interactions, fostering self-protective acts of secrecy and deception amongst prisoners. Unmet emotional needs appear particularly problematic.

The paper highlights the need for further research exploring issues of unmet emotional needs in prisoners; in particular, assistive methods of need recognition and support in the problematic context.

The paper identifies significant unmet information needs in prisoners that impact upon their ability to cope with incarceration, and prepare for successful release and reintegration.

The paper addresses an understudied group of significant societal concern and advances the understanding of information need in context, providing insight into unmet needs and issues of affect in the incarcerated small world context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives a person adopts in order to engage in hate-related behaviours within a prison setting. A subsidiary aim of the study was to compare this cohort of prisoners with prisoners who have been convicted for aggravated racism in the community.

In order to gather data, an exploratory research design was adopted, utilising the method of semi-structured interviews. In total, a number of nine interviews were conducted. Qualitative analysis was then employed allowing for an examination of meaning in relation to the motives behind the commission of hate crimes to occur.

The findings revealed the presence of racist beliefs and attitudes in both groups involved in the study. Further similarities between the two groups included the perception of inequality and beliefs about racism. The differences between the two groups included poor emotional regulation and an inability to manage beliefs and subsequent behaviours about people from different ethnic groups, with those in custody seeming to be more reactive.

The findings provide a preliminary insight into enhancing inmate safety. The environmental implications begin to reveal the complexity of hate-related behaviours in custody. There are differences between the context of hate crime committed in a prison environment compared to that committed in the community that require different solutions for addressing such behaviour. Further implications are considered in the final section of the paper.

A large body of research has been conducted on prison violence, seldom does this research examine this issue within the context of hate crime. This preliminary study offers an insight into prison-based hate crime.

This paper aims to explore the reasons for and the subsequent longer-term impact of the closure of the Barlinnie Special Unit (BSU).

The paper is both descriptive, providing an overview of the work of the BSU, and conceptual in that it argues that the limits of “prisoner rehabilitation” are observed in the closure of the BSU, which sounds a warning for other penal therapeutic communities and what it means to operate effectively.

The BSU which assisted long-term, difficult and violent prisoners moderate their prison behaviour and then to live non-offending lives, lost the confidence of government ministers and officials, as well as senior prison managers and, seemingly, the public, so closed after being in operation for 21 years. The impact of this has been that the Scottish Prison Service has not introduced, or attempted to introduce, a similar regime for managing and treating violent and disruptive prisoners.

There are important lessons to be learned from the BSU experience for all who manage and work in specialist, prison therapeutic units or within prison therapeutic regimes. This includes balancing the therapeutic elements of the regime, which may involve engaging in practices which are outside the norm for custodial establishments, with those establishments’ security and operational requirements, so as to not to create a disconnect between addressing offending behaviour and maintaining expected standards of wider prison conduct.

While there have been previous evaluations of the BSU, the longer-term impact has neither been previously considered and nor has the unit’s closure been considered from a penal philosophical perspective.