CALLS have been made to extend the use of electronic tagging to ease the strain of rising numbers of remand prisoners on Scotland's jails.

More than half of all arrivals at prisons are people being placed on remand by the courts.

In 2012, 19,175 were entering prison on remand compared to only 14,117 in 2001 - a rise of more than a third.

Now a crime and justice group has told ministers they should look at setting up a pilot scheme to take remand and custodial sentencing away from a summary court and put resources into community options –so that they are seen as the default.

Electronic tagging, which was introduced as a pilot in three areas in Scotland over ten years ago, should be introduced as authorities take greater advantage of supervised bail, The Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice (SCCCJ) said.

An evaluation in 2007 commissioned be the then Scottish Executive, into the trials in Glasgow, Kilmarnock and Stirling concluded that electronic tagging had failed to reduce the prison population significantly.

But SCCCJ believes tagging will be far cheaper and more cost effective.

A separate Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research snapshot analysis of the state of prisons has said that the country imprisons people on remand at unexpectedly high rates for a country of its size and crime rate.

The research showed that there are now thousands more admissions to Scottish prisons of people on remand, awaiting a trial or sentence, than those serving a sentence.

The study says that now nearly one in five of the 8062 prison population in Scotland were on remand, either awaiting a trial or sentencing. Fifteen years ago it was one in six.

The report  said : "Many of those remanded will either be found ‘not guilty’ or will receive a non-custodial sentence. This raises the question of why they were remanded in custody in the first place.

"Overcrowding is an issue in the accommodation of remand prisoners, and overcrowding poses a number of problems.

"Remanding an individual in custody is one of the most expensive ways of monitoring them prior to trial."

In a separate commentary SCCCJ said: "In terms of efforts to reduce the use of remand, electronically monitored bail should be revisited. It seems strange that we resort to custodial remand when EM is available as a means of control which is less stigmatising, allows the maintenance of relationships, employment, training, and is far less expensive.

"The best way to save money in the criminal justice system is by closing prisons. Barlinnie prison is due to be rebuilt to the cost in excess of £150 million. If we significantly reduce the remand population and increase diversion programmes we could look at not building such an expensive replacement."

The consortium, that brings together leading organisations concerned with crime and criminal justice in Scotland,  said judicial decision-makers cannot be blamed for coming to the "sincerely held" judgement that the only way to address the needs as well as deeds of some individuals is to impose custody, either through remand or through sentence, because the community based services are so stretched.

But they warned: "This phenomenon will become even more acute, unless action is taken to preclude it. Over the next few years we will see further deep cuts to community justice and indeed the very community services on which community justice relies.  Meanwhile, prisons are better resourced than they were.
"One cannot necessarily blame individual judicial decision-makers, prosecutors, social workers for seeing custody as the only ‘safe haven’ for such individuals. Yet in policy terms it makes no sense and is a dreadful waste of resources."

A Scottish Government spokesman said it was exploring options on how to reduce the use of remand, particularly where there is limited chance of an individual receiving a custodial sentence.

“We are also looking at practical options to reduce the use of remand and the use of custodial sentences of less than 12 months. This project is in the early stages and is working with three pathfinder sites to identify and test practical improvements to help reduce the use of remand. Successful practice will then be shared more widely," said the spokesman.