Reliance loses £24m contract for prisoners

Troubled security firm Reliance has lost its £2million a month contract to escort prisoners between custody and court appearances.

Around 700 jobs are affected by the Scottish Prison Service’s decision to ask rivals G4S Care and Justice Services to transfer around 180,000 inmates a year.

The move follows blunders by Reliance in its handling of prisoners during its seven-year contract, which is due to end in January. They include an inmate escaping from a prison van in Edinburgh last year and three years ago a pregnant prisoner being chained to an officer for three days as she was treated in hospital. The company has defended its record and declined to comment on the decision. G4S manages the immigration detention centre at Dungavel in South Lanarkshire and large private prisons south of the Border. Its managing director Russell Hobbs said: “G4S has unrivalled expertise in the care and transport of prisoners. “We are delighted to be providing court services for Scotland.” It is understood the 700 staff employed by Reliance to handle its prisoner escort service will be covered by Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) laws to protect workers when a contract or business changes hands. In 2008, Reliance apologised to pregnant Donna McLeish, an inmate at Cornton Vale women’s prison in Stirling, who was chained to a security officer 24-hours a day while being treated at Stirling Royal Infirmary. Changes were later made to the way pregnant prisoners are handled. In April 2009, 28-year-old Brian Lamb vaulted out of the dock after hearing he was to be jailed and in April last year, a prisoner broke free from a prison van stopped at traffic lights in West Lothian. Labour’s justice spokesman Richard Baker MSP said the award of the major long-term contract should not have been approved by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill so close to May’s Scottish Parliament elections. He said. “This is a decision that should have been taken by an incoming administration.”

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