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Hi everyone and welcome back to Lessons to Learn.

This week The Herald has been running an in-depth special on the state of Scotland’s prisons. You can read all the articles so far here, and there’s still more to come.

An investigation into things like prisoner numbers and the conditions in jails isn’t something I’d have typically been involved in, but there are several links between education and our system of incarceration.

As Professor Susan McVie (one of Scotland’s leading experts in this area) explained to me, there is a “very strong relationship between certain types of behaviours and patterns and trends in school years and then transitioning into the criminal justice system, particularly amongst those who end up in prison.”

Put simply, if you look at the people who do go to prison, they have often had particularly negative school experiences.

You’ll soon also be able to read about my visit to Castle Huntly, Scotland’s only open prison, which was really thought-provoking.

The other obvious link is found in the actual education that happens inside prisons.

Up until this year, that has been delivered by Fife College,........

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