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Updated Scottish prison population projections have been released today by Scotland's Chief Statistician. The statistical release Scottish prison population projections: 2009-10 to 2018-19 includes information on recent trends in the Scottish prison population and the methodology used to produce the projections. These projections take into account current trends in the prison population, including the latest provisional data for the first 10 months of 2009.

The main points are:

• The latest set of prison population projections suggests that the average daily prison population will increase from 8,100 in 2009-10, to 9,600 by 2018-19
• The prison population has been rising steadily since 2000, with an unprecedented sharp increase during 2008 and 2009. This is due in part to a series of changes to the criminal justice system over the past few years
• The main driver for the record population levels seen so far during 2008 and 2009 are the numbers of prisoners serving sentences under four years. These have increased steadily since 2007, from approximately 2,600 to 3,000, with the rate of increase accelerating during 2008 and 2009 to reach current levels of about 3,500

These projections do not produce infallible predictions. Observed long, medium and short term trends in sentencing behaviour over the past 36 years are used to project forward the current figures, assuming that sentencing behaviour remains relatively stable. Details on the methodology used to produce the prison population projections are included in the publication.

Further information can be found in the Scottish Prison Service Annual Report and Accounts for 2008-09 on the SPS website and in the 2008-09 Prison Statistics Scotland bulletin

Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff.

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