Who We Are

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Prison Fellowship Scotland is a non-denominational, faith-based Christian charity, working inside Scotland's prisons.  Our work is with the 15 Prisons and the two new Community Custody Units across Scotland spread out from Dumfries in the South to Inverness in the North. Currently, there are approximately 7775 prisoners in these prisons. Working alongside Prison Chaplaincy our core work consists of the following areas:

  • Weekly conversational/fellowship groups based on biblical stories, concepts and themes. We use music, real-life stories, drama and arts as methods and means to give the men and women in prison the opportunity to explore faith and the bible.

  • Restorative Justice/Victim awareness - We deliver a 6-week course named "Sycamore Tree" that helps offenders look at the consequences of their crimes.  This course is at present being delivered in 3 of the prisons with a fourth scheduled to start later this year.

  • Letter Writing programme – We are starting a letter writing programme called "A Time to Write" where volunteers will be trained to write regular letters (normally monthly) to prisoners in the Scottish jails who have expressed an interest in corresponding with a Prison Fellowship volunteer.

  • Through our Angel Tree programme, we provide Christmas presents for the children of men and women in prison each year. This programme is run along with the family liaison units of the jails and gives further opportunity of building relationships with prisoners.

  • Children affected by imprisonment - Each year we sponsor around 30 to 35 Children affected by imprisonment to attend an adventure holiday provided by SU Scotland.

Apart from these regular and structured activities at its heart Prison Fellowship Scotland is an organisation that puts relationships at the centre of all we do and by providing strong accountability structures we support volunteers in following up on prisoners as they complete their sentence and leave prison seeking to link them with churches and other practical support.  This work is frequently done in partnership with other organisations.

In 2018 this partnership was formalised by PF Scotland entering into a partnership agreement with the Scottish Prison Service to support the delivery of chaplaincy services to Prisons.