Scotland – Young offenders are to be given vitamin pills in a bid to control their criminal behavior after the Scottish Prison Service agreed to a £2m study by scientists from Oxford University.

Previous similar experiments have recorded significant reductions in anti-social activity by inmates when their diet was supplemented with vitamins, fatty acids and trace minerals.

Now SPS health chief Dr Andrew Fraser has consented to the scheme at Polmont Young Offenders' Institute, near Falkirk.

Prisoners will be invited to take part in trials planned for later this year. The groundbreaking research was also welcomed by former Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland Clive Fairweather and the Soil Association, which represents the organic food movement.

The study will be spearheaded by Bernard Gesch of the department of physiology, anatomy and genetics at the University of Oxford. In a previous experiment involving 231 inmates at Aylesbury YOI, Buckinghamshire, Gesch's team noted remarkable results.

A group whose diet had been enriched committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations of the prison code than before the experiment began. Serious breaches - which usually involved an element of violence - dropped by 37 percent.

Despite these startling results, the Home Office has ruled out establishing a nutritional regime for prisoners until it takes soundings from a pilot scheme being run in Dutch jails. But the SPS's approval signals that the Scottish Executive may be willing to embrace more radical preventative approaches to crime.

A source insisted: "We'd all like to know whether diet can be used positively to affect behaviour. This project may have much wider significance for Scotland's public sector. It could also eventually affect meals in schools and hospitals, not just jails. This may end up having very wide implications."

Fraser has recently expanded his prison service role to include the newly-formed Good Food Group.

He said: "The SPS welcomes evidence-based research that will improve the wellbeing of prisoners. We are willing to be a setting for research into nutritional content of food in relation to behaviour and all other aspects of well-being."

The latest proposals received a warm welcome from Fairweather who was chief inspector of Scotland's jails between 1994 and 2002.

He said: " In my experience with my own children, if you give them Coca Cola and chips, for example, you don't get very good behaviour.

"And there's no question that a better diet for prisoners would also lead to better behaviour among prisoners.

It would be wrong to claim that all criminal behaviour is because of poor diet but there's no question that poor diet is a contributory factor."

The Soil Association is involved in the Food For Life project which promotes nutrition and organic food in schools.

Spokesman Emma Noble added the group's backing to the Polmont experiment. She said: "Every school we are involved with has shown an improvement in behaviour and attention span in pupils who have a greater nutritional intake. There is no reason why this can't apply too to young offenders."