Scotland plans to install prefabricated “rapid deployment cells” at HMP Castle Huntly to ease severe prison overcrowding. The modular units, each with an en suite bathroom, are intended to add capacity more quickly and cheaply than constructing a new prison, although their use in Scotland would be unprecedented.

Castle Huntly currently accommodates 184 low-risk adult male prisoners, but the new units could substantially increase that number. Scotland’s prisons are officially designed for 7,805 inmates, yet held 8,506 on 11 September; trials in England found modular cells offered more space, privacy and autonomy, while helping improve prisoners’ mental wellbeing and reduce exposure to noise, violence and stress.