The general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation said Police Scotland does not have the “capacity” to arrest the amount of people it used to.
Police have been encouraged not to make arrests (Image: Getty)
Police officers are being “encouraged not to arrest people”, the head of the Scottish Police Federation has said. In a shocking comment, the body’s General Secretary, David Kennedy, said Police Scotland does not have the “capacity” to arrest the number of people it used to.
He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast show: “The criminal justice (system) changed. What’s happened is officers are encouraged not to arrest people. That’s the reality. That’s what’s happened and with the amount of police offices and stations closed, the custody suites are no longer there.
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“They don’t have the capacity anymore to arrest the amount of people they used to arrest. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s happened because if they were to arrest continually, they can’t. They do not have the amount of cells they would require to do so.”
His comments came after Chief Superintendent Rob Hay, President of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, wrote a letter in The Herald which warned the decline in arrest numbers should concern the public.
His letter was in response to Chief Constable Jo Farrell’s annual report to the Scottish Police Authority in which she revealed there had been 15,451 fewer arrests where an accused had been brought to a custody centre in 2025-26.
Ms Farrell said there were 83,765 instances of people being taken to a custody centre, down from 99,216 in 2024-25.
Mr Kennedy assured the public they should continue to have “faith” in Police Scotland officers – but “not necessarily” in the organisation itself.
He explained: “That’s down to the fact that they’ve been stripped of the financial capability to make sure that we have enough police officers to do the job they’re meant to do, and the reality is at the moment we don’t.
“The problem is the organisation can’t cope. We don’t have enough police officers.”
Meanwhile, in England and Wales the UK Government continues to grapple with a prisons capacity crisis, with the latest early release of prisoners due in October.
Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after some exemptions were announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme to tackle jail overcrowding ordered by Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Exemptions were made for people convicted of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming offences.
Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, said on Tuesday (August 11) that the Government will set out how it will exempt the killers of Pc Andrew Harper along with other serious criminals when Parliament returns in September.
Her comment came amid a second review of the early release scheme from a Government desperately scrambling to respond to a public outcry.
Pc Harper was fatally injured when he got caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and was dragged down a country road as his killers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in 2019.
Two out of three of Pc Harper’s killers, Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, were set to be released half way through their 13-year sentences, after being convicted of manslaughter in 2020. News of the potential release sparked an angry reaction from Pc Harper’s family and the public.