By Paul Hutcheon

THE Scottish Prison Service paid for twenty staff members to enrol on a £18,000 postgraduate course at the same time as spending a fraction of the sum on education for inmates.

Senior SPS figures benefited from the elite course at Cambridge University even though the public body spent barely £600 a head on offenders.

Daniel Johnson MSP, Scottish Labour’s spokesperson on Justice, said:

“There is no doubt that the leadership within our prison system needs people of the highest calibre, and that those people need the best training to ensure they can do a vital job for the public and those in custody.

“However, while prison staff are receiving world-leading training, prisoners themselves are not getting the skills they need. We know that giving those who have been convicted of crime the opportunity and skills to work is the best way to prevent reoffending."

A lack of basic education qualifications has been cited as a contributory factor behind individuals reoffending after their release from prison.

Campaigners and opposition politicians have called on the Government and the SPS, which runs the country’s prison estate and employs around 4,000 people, to increase investment in training and skills.

Based on data covering August 2015 to July 2017, a screening programme found that 70% of prisoners were functionally illiterate, which meant they were at or below SCQF Level 4.

The same exercise found that 85% of prisoners were without a basic knowledge of maths and arithmetic.

According to the SPS annual accounts, the service spent around £4.5m on education contracts in 2017/18. With 7,461 prisoners catered for in the same year, the SPS spent around £600 per head.

However, the SPS confirmed last week that it had paid for twenty staff, including governors and prison officers, to study for a Criminology MSt at Cambridge in recent years.

The two-year course focuses on prison and penal policy, but the service is now looking at “other ways” of boosting skills.

Amongst those who took up the opportunity were Glenochil prison governor Nigel Ironside and SPS Director of Operations Jim Kerr, who used to run the maximum security prison at Shotts.

According to the course website, the MSt has “traditionally been intended for prison and probation practitioners” and added:

“In recent years, in addition to large cohorts of staff from the prison and probation services, we have welcomed onto the course immigration officials, magistrates and lawyers.”

Scottish Tory MSP Liam Kerr said: “Having a well and regularly trained prison service is fundamental to a well operating prison service.

“However, for prisons to rehabilitate criminals it is essential that prisoners also have educational opportunities. The SNP must therefore reverse the cuts to purposeful activity in prisons and enable prisoners to have access to education, and rehabilitation.”

An SPS spokesperson said: “SPS allowed some 20 of our staff from various grades across the organisation to participate in the course which was widely recognised as being of an extremely high calibre. No such provision was available in Scotland at the time.

“We are now in the process of developing a range of training interventions for our staff to further the professionalisation of our staff and do not anticipate any further involvement in the Cambridge programme at this time.”