Porterfield prisoners pile in with grievances

Prisoners in three of Scotland’s largest jails lodged more than 3,600 complaints with prison chiefs over the past three years.

Inmates at Porterfield Prison in Inverness made 348 complaints.

Criticism of food and staffing standards at the 117-year-old Highland prison were among a string of grievances described as “spurious” by an MSP last night.

Prisoners at the 104-capacity jail in Duffy Drive, Crown, also complained after they had been docked wages and stripped of recreation time for breaking rules.

The complaints are among 3,606 objections made by prisoners to the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) at the three largest prisons in the north and north-east.

Inmates at the crumbling 305-capacity Peterhead Prison, which is due to be replaced by a £140million “superjail”, lodged 2,045 grievances.

Aberdeen’s 218-capacity Craiginches jail, heavily criticised by the chief inspector of prisoners earlier this year, prompted 1,213 complaints.

Publication of the figures follows revelations that the Scottish Legal Aid Board made compensation payments to prisoners totalling £4,074,000 between 2004 and September this year.

Figures obtained by the Press and Journal under freedom of information laws are spread across 40 categories and show that wages, victimisation and physical environment also provoked objections at all three jails.

Gordon Morrice, deputy governor at Porterfield, said the number of complaints there was lower than at Peterhead because prisoners did not generally stay longer than six months in Inverness.

He said: “Peterhead deals with a certain group of prisoners, the more long-term prisoners who have more time to think about things and more time to find problems.

“Inverness in the main deals with short-term prisoners. They put up with things if it’s not going to affect them for a significant period. For a prisoner serving at Peterhead, very small things become very big things.”

Porterfield Prison also bans visits from family or friends if it is believed they may pass drugs to prisoners.

He said complaints were inevitable but the figures did not take into account the high number of issues that were resolved amicably.

Mr Morrice added: “The majority are resolved face to face, but some will make an official complaint if they don’t have the confidence to talk face to face.”

Across Scotland, the figure jumped to 40,000, with complaints ranging from a ban on kissing visitors to not being given a Christmas bonus for work done in workshops.

Politicians said last night it was time prisoners had a reality check and dismissed the majority of complaints as “spurious”.

Medical treatment led to 279 complaints at Peterhead, 275 at Aberdeen and 54 at Inverness.

The prison regime at Peterhead led to 208 objections, while Aberdeen and Inverness inmates lodged 39 and 18 complaints respectively.

Some 140 complaints about food were made by Peterhead inmates, with 67 at Aberdeen and 14 in Inverness.

Staffing is also not up to scratch, according to some prisoners, with Peterhead inmates complaining 130 times, Aberdeen prisoners on 84 occasions and Inverness offenders 39 times.

Other aspects of prison life that prompted complaints include education, bullying, gym facilities, prisoner clothing and telephones.

Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken said: “The complaint system has been set up to deal with genuine complaints, not the soup being cold.

“There has to be a realisation on the part of prisoners that by committing crime and being jailed it is actually a punishment and it seems to me that some of the complaints are, to say the least, spurious.

“Also, it all takes time and money to investigate these complaints. It is time prisoners got real.”

Mr Aitken’s Labour counterpart, Richard Baker, said it was “astounding” that Scotland had a Prison Complaints Commission but nothing similar for victims of crime.

“There seems to be a real imbalance and I know that sticks in the throat of the public,” he said.

“Another thing myself and the wider public will find shocking is the amount of compensation paid out to serving prisoners who have complained about one thing or another.

“Every crime has its punishment and people feel prisoners will complain about almost anything, when in fact they don’t really have a lot to complain about.”

An SPS spokesman said the level of complaints at Peterhead, Aberdeen and Inverness in the past three years had been “fairly normal".

He added: “With an increasing prison population, we have to feed more people and more people have to share cells.

“In general terms, these prisons are becoming busier with overcrowding. Complaints naturally follow on.

“There is no doubt that the services we provide in these Victorian-style establishments cannot be as suitable to those found in a 21st-century prison.”