Scotland sends more of its people to prison on a daily basis than any other country in Europe including Russia and Turkey, according to new research.
More Scots per 100,000 inhabitants are sent to jail than 48 other countries, including Albania, Austria and Bulgaria and Azerbaijan.
The Council of Europe's penal statistics place Scotland at the top of a league table of flow of entry to prisons - despite the promises of successive ministers to curb the numbers.
The figures show that 753.9 people are sent to prison per 100,000 inhabitants with England far behind at 253. Second is Switzerland, with Moldova third.
Scotland already has one of the highest per capita prison populations in Europe but this is the first time it has topped any of the European prison league tables.
The news comes days before Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, is due to unveil his response to the McLeish Prisons Commission published earlier this year which recommended cutting short term sentences and dramatic changes to penal policy.
The research, which was discussed for the first time last week at the Scottish Policy Innovation Forum - a group based at Glasgow University that seeks to inform policy makers on a wide range of topics including penal reform.
Dr Sarah Armstrong, senior researcher at Glasgow University, said: "Excessive use of remand is one important driver of this as is the use of very short sentences.
"I'm looking at the fact that more people go to prison on remand each year than sentenced prisoners. It is a hugely important area but seems to have been neglected in studies.
"Unfortunately we found that Scotland is the absolute worst in terms of this. In terms of the total daily prison population, we are in a league with England and Wales, but in terms of actual turnover and the numbers entering prison across Europe we are the highest.
Another huge growth area is the growth in prison of the numbers awaiting sentence."
There are currently some 7801 offenders behind bars in Scotland and 391 out on home detention curfew. Earlier this year, the prison population reached an all-time high of 8137.
The chief executive of the prison service told The Herald that jails were in a state of "crisis" and had exceeded safe limits.
In 2007 some 22,500 people were admitted to prison to await trial or final sentence compared to 18,277 to serve a sentence.
Remand has increased from accounting for 15% of the overall prison population 15 years ago to 21% now.
At the SPIF seminar, Dr Armstrong also asked what policymakers could do with an extra £2m - the amount of money saved if you had 750 fewer people serving remand on a given day than normal. The Scottish Prisons Commission, led by former first minister Henry McLeish, recommended reducing that number to 5000.
The McLeish report set out a plan to end all prison sentences of less than six months, with a few exceptions.
It is the thousands of sentences handed out to offenders of six months or less which is fuelling Scotland's position at the top of the European league table.
This week Mr MacAskill is expected to call for greater use of new robust community sentences and "progress courts" to monitor and check offender's adherence to them.
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