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I am grateful to HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for this inspection report, and am pleased to note that he concluded that he had few concerns of a statutory nature with regard to the day to day operation of the prison and that he found that the atmosphere in most of the Halls was relaxed due to good staff/prisoner relationships.
I agree that there should be a national policy for the management of young offenders. The SPS are currently drawing up a comprehensive policy document which will set out proposals for dealing with this issue.
Dumfries already has an induction process for all long-term young offenders. However, this is deficient in that it does not include an assessment process geared to the effective sentence management of young offenders and the Governor will now develop and pilot such an assessment process over the next 12 months.
The need to extend the liaison procedures adopted by long-term prisons who receive prisoners from Dumfries is accepted and arrangements are currently underway to implement it.
As the Chief Inspector points out one of the difficulties in providing a small number of places for female prisoners to serve their sentence close to their home is the difficulty in providing a meaningful regime for them. I accept that Dumfries have had particular problems with this and that there should be a complete reinvigoration of the entire routine in the female unit. A review of the regime is therefore currently underway and I hope that this will lead to a more constructive regime geared to addressing the needs of the female population.
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