About �8m is spent annually on rehabilitation and prevention programmes in Scottish jails. Some 5,000 inmates attend courses, a little over a quarter of the total annual population.

If those individuals come out of jail with a drug habit it is you and I that pick up that bill

Clive Fairweather

Drugs cause serious problems in prisons, with assaults and bullying commonplace.

Further incentives are to be offered to help prisoners as part of the latest initiative, on top of existing pilot schemes in some prisons which allow drug-free inmates to earn extra money in workshops.

The Scottish Executive will also provide cash to help inmates to avoid drugs after they finish their sentence.

The moves have been discussed by the UK's drugs czar, Keith Hellawell and Jim Orr, the director of the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency.

They met Scotland's Deputy Justice Minister, Angus Mackay, in Edinburgh and visited the city's Turning Point project, where users who are stable or virtually drug-free are helped.

Jim Orr: Talks with minister

They discussed ploys ranging from intercepting supplies to aiding ex-addicts.

Mr MacKay said: "What we have to do is to take an opportunity at that time to help those individuals to confront their drug misuse.

"Not only to treat the symptoms, but also to rehabilitate themselves so that by the time they come back out into the community they are not simply falling back into the same cycle of criminal activity and then going back to prison.

"It is a tremendous opportunity to treat and rehabilitate."

Glenochil seizure

The move was welcomed by the chief inspector of prisons Clive Fairweather.

He said: "If those individuals come out of jail with a drug habit it is you and I that pick up that bill.

"So why not use the time to stop drug habits, or certainly to reduce them."

Last week's major disturbance at Glenochil Prison in Clackmannanshire was said to have followed the seizure of heroin from a visitor to the jail.

A 31-year-old Aberdeen woman has appeared at Alloa Sheriff Court in court in connection with the heroin.