The prospect of accommodating women in prisons where the majority of the inmates are men might be seen as a return to the bad old days. That such a step is being considered by the Scottish Prison Service is yet further evidence that our prison system is so overstretched that it requires a radical remedy.
The prospect of accommodating women in prisons where the majority of the inmates are men might be seen as a return to the bad old days. That such a step is being considered by the Scottish Prison Service is yet further evidence that our prison system is so overstretched that it requires a radical remedy.
Moving all but the most serious female offenders from Cornton Vale near Stirling to prisons closer to the communities they come from would be one aspect of a new policy of jails catering for the full range of prisoners including young offenders and sex offenders. The rationale is that they would be able to maintain closer links with their families, who often have to make long and difficult journeys to visit, and with local health and social services. It is well-established that prisoners who are able to maintain relationships with their families and communities are less likely to re-offend.
With the prison population at an all-time high and all except the open prisons overcrowded, the new policy could not be implemented without a drastic reduction in numbers. It would also require new facilities to keep young offenders and women separate from adult male prisoners. In four years' time, however, a new, purpose-built prison to accommodate the full range of offenders is due to open on the site of Peterhead Prison and will therefore offer a model to test the practicalities of the new philosophy. That is most likely to succeed if it is implemented along with the recommendations of the prisons commission chaired by former First Minister Henry McLeish. It calls for most offenders to be dealt with by community sentences, reserving prison for the most serious, but has yet to be considered by the Scottish Parliament. One of the benefits would be that prison staff would then have more time for rehabilitation work with offenders given custodial sentences. One of the potential disadvantages of housing different types of prisoners in community prisons is that some groups (most obviously women) would be too small to be offered the range of programmes they require.
Yet the reasoning behind the McLeish recommendations, that very short prison sentences do not have the scope for any rehabilitative work, while community orders could involve treatment for addiction as well as "payback", is particularly relevant to women prisoners, 90% of whom have drug and alcohol problems. In the case of mothers with young babies, there are obvious advantages for them to be close to their families. There will be questions over disbanding the specialist unit for sex offenders, but such prisoners are also dispersed throughout the system. However, if they are also to be in community prisons, it should be with access to appropriate specialist programmes to minimise re-offending. Prison should not be a soft option but we need a new consensus on how the prison system can best deliver an effective balance between punishment and rehabilitation. Radical options ought to be part of the debate.
