IT is not ideal, and indeed paradoxical, that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) should be taking the lead on reducing the use of custody for women. The best way would be, as Maggie Mellon suggests (Letters, February 9) for a network of statutory and voluntary agencies in the community to take responsibly for this, and for prevention and diversion to be their guiding ethos.

It is true, too, that the well-intentioned SPS rhetoric of "the good prison" which will at last fulfil the penal promise of rehabilitation and reintegration rings all too hollow to those who remember the early days of Holloway and Cornton Vale, when the same was said. But the SPS's proposed model of five minimum security, community-facing units for 20 prisoners each, dispersed across the country, is new. It is probably as unfair to characterise them as "wee super prisons" as it is to think they will be easily established in communities that will probably not want them, however they are branded.

The policy dilemma is this. The network of community agencies that ought ideally to be developing the alternatives to HMP Inverclyde exists in name only. For all the high quality of its services to individuals, and its immense goodwill, it is too fragmented and uncertain of itself to take a strategic lead on anything. The much-maligned community justice authorities were too preoccupied with routine business to devise a coherent penal vision, or even to translate the ready-made vision of the Scottish Prison Commission into a viable strategy. That is one reason why SPS has found it so easy to push itself to the fore in the current debate on women offenders.

The Justice Secretary could not himself remedy the structural and cultural weaknesses of community agencies overnight, even if he had the resources. For long-standing philosophical and historical reasons, criminal justice social work has never been certain whether it even stands for reducing the use of custody or not; the current Social Work Scotland 2015-2020 mission statement is still equivocal on this, to say the least.

Reluctant as I am to admit it, and however much one wishes it could have been pursued differently, what SPS is offering may be the only way forward at this moment. If those who campaigned to stall Inverclyde oppose it outright they will lend inadvertent succour to those who want this SNP policy to fail for cynical reasons of party advantage. At the same time, the dissenting voices should continue to demand that the five community units, and the approach to diversion and sentencing that should accompany them, become, in design and delivery, more distinctive than the SPS has yet dreamed.

Mike Nellis,

Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice,

University of Strathclyde School of Law, Graham Hills Building Level 7, 50 George Street, Glasgow.