Functions and Responsibilities
Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland was placed on a statutory basis by an Act of Parliament, the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1989; its functions and responsibilities are laid down accordingly. The Chief Inspector submits an annual report to the Scottish Parliament. Reports on individual prison visits are made to the Scottish Government and are subsequently published. The Scottish Ministers may also refer specific prison-related matters to the Chief Inspector for him to report on.
The Inspectorate carries out a regular inspection of Scotland's prisons (including the privately run prisons). Each of Scotland's 16 prisons is normally subject to a full inspection every three years. Annual shorter, follow-up visits - which may be unannounced - are also be made. Issues examinined include actual physical conditions, the quality of prisoner regimes, morale of staff and prisoners, facilities and amenities available to staff and prisoners, safety issues, and decency and contribution to reducing re-offending. The Inspectorate also inspects Legalised Police Cells (mainly used in rural parts of northern Scotland) and the conditions of prisoner escort arrangements.
The Inspectorate can only make recommendations; it has no executive power to enforce these recommendations. The inspection system is identical for both the state-run and privately managed prisons.
Read more about this topic: Her Majesty's Chief Inspector Of Prisons For Scotland
Famous quotes containing the words functions and and/or functions:
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)