Women sentenced to short prison sentences should automatically have their sentences commuted to electronic tagging, according to a leading criminologist.

 

The proposal comes as Justice Secretary Michael Matheson is reconsidering Scottish Government plans for a new women's prison near Greenock.

Nancy Loucks, who is chief executive of the charity Families Outside and a visiting professor at Strathclyde University, said the idea, comparable to the system in Belgium, should be used on a trial basis.

Professor Loucks has written to Mr Matheson adding her voice to calls for the Scottish Government to abandon plans for a large new women's prison.

The plans for the new prison in Inverclyde have become mired in controversy. While previous justice minister Kenny MacAskill insisted the prison would go ahead, the plan has met with widespread opposition and does not appear to be in line with the recommendations of a report on women offenders which the Government itself commissioned from former Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini.

Mr Matheson has indicated that he is willing to reconsider and first minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament this week it was important to get the decision right.

Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy has called for the plans to be scrapped and his party now plans to force a vote on the plans next week.

Professor Loucks said the new prison was too big and in the wrong place. However in her letter she told Mr Matheson "I want to ensure that the end of Inverclyde would not risk women continuing to languish in Cornton Vale for years until new options are agreed and implemented."

She praised the thinking which has gone into the plans for HMP Inverclyde, adding that if the prison were only for the few women who genuinely need to be in custody, it would have been "the best possible environment and ethos". She calls for the thinking that went into the plans to be preserved, but in smaller units.

"To have a large prison west of Greenock as a main national women's prison makes access for children and families and access for the women to their home communities exceptionally difficult and expensive, which in turns causes a multitude of problems for resettlement and consequently , further offending," she wrote.

She suggests other options would be trialling the Belgian approach, where women sentenced to anything less than three years are instead tagged and tracked by GPS and other methods. "As 77% of women in prison in Scotland are sentenced to six months or less and as twice s many enter custody on remand than for sentence, piloting a version of this system would prevent a vast proportion of women entering custody," she says.

Opponents suggest that if HMP Inverclyde opens it will encourage the sentencing of more women to prison, when the female prison population has already doubled over the last two decades.

The Howard League for Scotland, Circle Scotland and Women for Indy have been among the key groups campaigning for an alternative.

Maggie Mellon, spokesperson for Women for Indy said: "We want to ensure that this is not treated as a party political football. Successive Scottish governments have failed to get a grip on huge rise in the unnecessary and harmful imprisonment of women."

She said that alternative community-based services should be protected. "There are a number of vital community based services whose finding expires at end March. It is essential that current services that offer diversion and non custodial disposals are saved and expanded. These services are cheaper and more effective. But they need investment and support in the long term."

Independent MSP Jean Urquhart hosted a meeting on the plans this week which was attended by MSPs from all but the Conservative Party. Her office said she would be writing to Mr Matheson to inform him of the cross party support for implementing the findings of Elish Angiolini's Commission on Women Offenders in full.