In relation to the Scottish Prison Service estates review, whether the private prisons envisaged will be allowed to take prisoners from oth…

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:Yes. As is presently the case with HMP Kilmarnock, any new private prisons would be able to take prisoners from other jurisdictions in the same circumstances as publicly operated prisons. Those circumstances are as follows:Under Schedule 1 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, prisoners may be received in any Scottish prison from another UK jurisdiction for the purposes of maintaining family contact or to enable the prisoner to attend criminal proceedings in Scotland.Also, under the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons or a bilateral agreement based on that Convention, prisoners may be received in any Scottish prison from a foreign jurisdiction because they have been repatriated to the UK to serve the remainder of their sentence. The aims of the Convention and the bilateral agreements are entirely humanitarian
- to enable prisoners to transfer to their home country to serve the remainder of their sentence. At present 48 countries are signatories to the Convention and the UK has agreements with a further 12 countries.Finally, prisoners may be received from other jurisdictions because they have been extradited either to stand trial or because they were unlawfully at large after conviction by a Scottish court. The United Kingdom has formal extradition relations with over 100 countries through two multilateral schemes
- the European Convention on Extradition and the Commonwealth Scheme for the Rendition of Fugitive Offenders and a number of bilateral treaties.