ONE IN EVERY nine prisoners across Scotland’s jails comes from Dundee or Fife, according to statistics just released by the prison service.

A snapshot of the prison population revealed the top 10 local authority areas that contribute the highest percentages of the total.

Fife was fourth in the league of shame, with 384 of its population in jail when the census was taken last year. Dundee city was fifth with just four prisoners fewer than Fife.

Topping the table was Glasgow city, which had 1569 of its citizens in jail.

Fife has a vastly greater general population than Dundee—360,000 compared to 142,000—so the fact they have equal numbers of their residents in jail indicates that the city contributes a disproportionate number of people to the prison population.

Dundee MSP Nigel Don, a member of the Scottish Government’s justice committee, was not surprised by Dundee’s position.

He said it was well recognised that criminality and other problems such as poor health and poor educational attainment were linked to deprivation.

“I think you will find everything this Government is about is saying do something about deprivation, do something about the economy, and a lot of these other problems will be helped,” said Mr Don.

“We are very well aware that the more deprived areas of Glasgow and Dundee are the places you get trouble which finishes up with young men going into prison.

“I suspect if you can get the prison system to give postcodes and home addresses of people in prison and correlated these with everything we know about areas of deprivation, we would find there is a straight correlation.”

Former Dundee councillor Neil Powrie, who is national chairman of the Association of Prison Visiting Committees, agreed that there was a link between criminality and deprivation,

However he warned against reading too much in to one specific sets of figures.

“Deprivation is probably one of the main contributing factors,” said Mr Powrie, adding that there were many factors contributing to the problem.

He said it was probably accurate that the Scottish prison population had disproportionately more people from Dundee than other parts of the country.

“It has got to do with the deprivation in many parts of Dundee but it is no worse or no better than many other parts of Scotland where there is equal deprivation.”