New Prison For Women Planned

A new women's prison with places for 80 offenders is to be built to replace Scotland's only female jail at Cornton Vale near Stirling, the Justice Secretary has announced.

Michael Matheson scrapped plans for a new 300-cell jail in Inverclyde in January.

The smaller prison, based on the current site at Cornton Vale, will house the most serious offenders. Five smaller units each accommodating up to 20 women will also be set up across the country.

They will provide support for alcohol, drugs, mental health and domestic abuse issues.

There will also be more use of community-based alternatives to short-term prison sentences, including increased use of electronic monitoring.

218 service is a existing alternative programme based in Glasgow. It aims to support women with criminal convictions struggling with addiction, mental illness and other health issues to prevent them re-offending.

Amanda is former resident at the service who now works as a support worker there. She believes the support she received saved her life.

She said: "I know if it wasn't for me getting in here I would be dead. My addiction had just ripped the life right out of me. It was just an existence I had."

It was announced that Cornton Vale would be closed down following a report into how best to deal with female offenders by former Lord Advocate Dame Elish Angiolini.

She branded the jail ''a miserable place'' where some prisoners lived in ''antediluvian and appalling'' conditions.

Dame Elish recommended in 2012 that there should be a smaller, specialist prison for long-term and high-risk prisoners, as well as regional units to hold those serving shorter sentences and those on remand.

Mr Matheson said: When I announced in January my decision not to proceed with HMP Inverclyde as a large national prison for women, I said that it did not fit with my vision of how a modern and progressive country should be addressing female offending and that we needed a bolder, more radical and ambitious approach in Scotland.

Following a period of intensive dialogue with our own experts in Scotland as well as international experts from across the world, I'm pleased to announce a new approach to how we deal with female offenders.

These are progressive proposals, they draw on the best available international evidence of what works, but they are tailored to specific circumstances here in Scotland.

Simply locking women up in a large facility doesn't work. We've seen the damaging impact that going in and out of prison has for the women, for their families and for their communities.

What we need is a new approach. We need to continue to transform and improve services for women so that we can help them to break the cycle of reoffending.

I believe that accommodating female offenders, where appropriate, in smaller units, close to their families, with targeted support to address the underlying issues such as alcohol, drugs, mental health or domestic abuse trauma is the way ahead.

It is also in line with previous expert reports by Dame Elish Angiolini and Henry McLeish in which it is recommended that we should target the use of prison where it can be most effective - in punishing serious crime and protecting the public.''

The new national prison and smaller units will be in place by 2020, the Scottish Government said.

Cathryn who is a recovering alcoholic and user of the 218 service thinks a more supporting approach is more effective as offenders often don't understand the crimes they have commited.

She said: "I think it would work tremendously because there's a lot of people out there - I can say this from my own experience - waking up in prison cells and don't know they're there."

"Police are coming in and charging me and I don't have one clue what I've done or how I've got here. I just know I'm getting charged."

The plans were welcomed by the Howard League for Penal Reform. John Scott QC, the charity's convener in Scotland, said: Howard League Scotland welcomed the Cabinet Secretary for Justice's decision not to proceed with plans to build HMP Inverclyde.

Since the Cabinet Secretary's announcement in January, the Government has recognised that more needs to be done to reduce the size of the female prison population in Scotland and we welcome their efforts.

The emphasis must be on preventing women from becoming caught up in the criminal justice system in the first place, diverting them at the point of arrest and prosecution wherever possible, and reducing the use of remand and short term prison sentences.

There must too be sustainable funding for community-based services and there are lessons to be learned from the success of work with young offenders and the reduction in numbers at Polmont.''