Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 16 December 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many prisoners have been released from Scottish prisons in error over the last 10 years.
I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:
A range of checks are carried out before the release of a prisoner is authorised including but not limited to, an identity check of the person, confirmation of liberation date and a check for any known outstanding warrants.
A liberation in error occurs when an individual is released from a Scottish Prison Service establishment without lawful authority. This situation typically arises due to an administrative or procedural mistake, such as incorrect interpretation of documentation, miscalculation of sentence dates or incorrect data sharing from other partners.
The following table provides the numbers of total liberations and the liberations in error since 2016-2017, up to and including 5 Dec 2025:
Year | Total Annual Liberations | Recorded Liberations in Error* | Liberations in Error as a percentage |
2016-17 | 23372 | 4 | 0.02% |
2017-18 | 21792 | 4 | 0.02% |
2018-19 | 21354 | 5 | 0.02% |
2019-20 | 21668 | 4 | 0.02% |
2020-21 | 12933 | 3 | 0.02% |
2021-22 | 13934 | 5 | 0.04% |
2022-23 | 14769 | 8 | 0.05% |
2023-24 | 15732 | 7 | 0.04% |
2024-25 | 16387 | 9 | 0.05% |
2025-26** | 10751 | 5 | 0.05% |
TOTAL | 172692 | 54 | 0.03% |
*All liberations in error are subject to review by the Warrants Administration Group (WAG), at which point the data may change depending on the outcome of the review.
**up to 5 December 2025