Howard League Scotland has been clear about its objection to the proposed new women's prison HMP Inverclyde. We recently provided evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee voicing concerns that the decision to build the new prison is not in keeping with the recommendations of the 2012 report of the Commission on Women Offenders.

It is worth casting our minds back to the early 1970s, when the decision was taken to build HMP Cornton Vale. This documentary, made in 1972, considers the rationale for building Cornton Vale (which the reporter notes "sets the pattern for future Scots prisons"):

Scotland on Screen -Women’s Prisons 1
Scotland on Screen -Women’s Prisons 2

And this following episode of STV's 'Scottish Women' sought to address the spate of suicides that took place in Cornton Vale in the 1990s.

As Scotland embarks on building a new prison for women, can we be sure we have learned the lessons of past failures?

In Shine Mentoring's most recent newsletter, Mary Thomson, a Shine mentor, reflects on her work with those most vulnerable people in our criminal justice system. Her work as a one-to-one mentor has provided her a unique position to see that women in the criminal justice system do not suffer from some sort of criminal pathology, but are people shaped by poverty, abuse and extreme social deprivation. Shine works to support change rather than punish women:

'When the Report of the Commission on Women Offenders, by Dame Elish Angiolini, was published on 17 April 2012 I had already been working as a mentor in Sacro’s Women’s Mentoring Service in Lanarkshire for almost two years. As a mentor, I was supporting women aged 16 and over who had offended to make changes to their lifestyles and reduce their chances of receiving a custodial sentence. During this time I had worked with some of the most vulnerable and damaged women in our community. Typically the women referred had experienced multiple abuse: sexual, physical and emotional. Many had issues with substance misuse and poor mental health. Almost all were on welfare benefits. When you add low educational achievement and lack of self-esteem into the equation it was no surprise that most of the women referred to our service required substantial, long term interventions to help them make changes to their lives, now and in the future.