Super-prison out of step with policy of cutting the number of inmates

PLANS for a super-prison for women in Inverclyde seemed ill-conceived from the start.

The £75 million project, brought forward by Kenny MacAskill when he was justice secretary, appeared to run counter to Scottish Government policy of reducing the number of women in jail, as well as the findings of several official reviews.

Ironically, it would have been a state-of-the-art facility, designed quite differently from other jails, with human conditions and ground-breaking arrangements for family access.

But it is two decades since Henry McLeish, then Scottish home affairs minister, pledged to halve the number of women in jail. There were fewer than 200 female prisoners then. The Greenock project would have had capacity for 300 – it made no sense, in the wake of 20 years of cross-party attempts to reduce numbers.

With Mr MacAskill coming under increasing pressure from within and outside his party to rethink the plan, almost the first act of current Justice Secretary Michael Matheson on replacing him in 2014, was to scrap the proposed jail.

“It does not fit with my vision of how a modern and progressive country should be addressing female offending,” Mr Matheson said. The decision was widely welcomed, although political opponents took advantage of the £8m to £11m “wasted” on developing the site.

Opening a community justice centre for women in Wishaw this week, Dame Elish also welcomed the decision. Cornton Vale governor, Rhona Hotchkiss, is now shaping a blueprint for five community-based secure units holding around 20 prisoners each and two larger prisons at Cornton Vale and Aberdeen holding 50 and 80 women respectively.

Dame Elish welcomed the Scottish Prison Service plans but said what was happening in Scotland’s communities was more important. She said: “There is little point in creating a lot of little prisons to replace bigger ones if nothing is being done to help women stop offending. That means helping them get off drugs, improve their mental health, or find stability in often chaotic, violent lives.

“Helping prisons better help the women inside is part of it but the bigger part should be the support services outside, in their communities.”