Moaning prisoners are bombarding jail chiefs with hundreds of complaints a year winning thousands in compensation as a result.
Across Scotland, around 16 official gripes are being lodged every day.
The majority of them are about the quality of prison food or work details that prisoners are forced to attend.
Prisoners won £65,000 in compensation from taxpayers last year, after their moans were deemed legitimate.
Scottish Conservative justice spokeswoman Margaret Mitchell has branded the compensation culture in our jails a travesty.
“The Scottish Government has created this problem with their soft-touch approach to justice,” she said.
“This has created a culture of moaning and has led to prisoners viewing privileges as a right.
“It is not acceptable that the taxpayer should have to foot the bill for these grotesque complaints made by people who are in prison because they have broken the law.”
The probe comes weeks after it was revealed cons were enjoying top-notch food behind bars.
Despite this, Scotland’s 8,000 cons launched 390 gripes about the standard of their foods last year with a further 178 complaints about jail canteens.
The most popular grumble overall was complaints about their property (619). There were 413 official complaints about jail staff.
Cons even moaned about problems with laundry (72), difficulties with home leave (37), gym (102) and exercise (34).
There were also two complaints from prisoners who felt they had been victimised because of their sexual orientation.
The taxpayer was forced to hand out a total of £65,000 in compensation in personal injury claims (£50,000), damage to property (£10,000) and in unlawful detentions (£5,000).
Prisoners at HMP Edinburgh were given the biggest pay-out for damage to their property with 38 cons getting pay-outs of over £1,700 between them.
At the opposite end of the pay-out spectrum comp-laining cons at Inverness were given £5.20 between three of them for damage to their property.
Regardless of the size of the claims, campaigners say the public would be angered by the revelation.
Jonathan Isaby of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “These numbers paint a terrible picture and taxpayers will be rightly angry.
“Either the authorities are failing to treat prisoners at the legal standard or they’re giving out compensation too easily.”
While the overwhelming majority of complaints are rubbished by prison bosses as bogus, many are upheld. Many prisoners get legal aid to support their efforts to sue.
A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: “We deal with 45,000 people passing through the system every year.
“Dealing with complaints is part and parcel of the job. The genuine ones help us improve our procedures and systems.”
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