BRIEFING NOTE ON SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSALS TO BUILD A NEW WOMEN’S PRISON

The 2012 Commission on Women Offenders (CWO) recommended that Cornton Vale should be replaced with “a smaller specialist prison for those women offenders serving a statutory defined long-term sentence and those who present a significant risk to the public”.

In response to this recommendation, the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) proposes to replace Cornton Vale with a prison on the outskirts of Greenock to be known as HMP Inverclyde with a capacity to hold 300 women, with the option of increasing this to 350 places. The planned prison would hold convicted and remand adult and young offenders of varying legal and security categories and of varying sentence lengths, from short-term to life sentences.

As Howard League Scotland has made clear before, this represents a clear departure from the recommendation of the CWO report.

Earlier this week, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice Michael Matheson MSP and the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service Colin McConnell gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee. Both were clear that they believed the proposed new women’s prison to be in keeping with the spirit and the letter of the CWO report recommendations.

When it comes to prison, size matters. To achieve a more rehabilitative enviroment in prison, smaller is better. More broadly, Howard League Scotland argues that the proposal to build a 350-bed new women’s prison is at odds with the Scottish Government’s commendable aspiration to reduce the prison population and that it undermines all the good work the Scottish Government has done and is doing to implement other recommendations contained within the 2012 report.

There are currently 390 women in prison in Scotland, the majority of whom do not need to be imprisoned for reasons of public protection. If the proposal for HMP Inverclyde goes ahead, the capacity of the female prison estate will be 500. Far from aiming for a reduction in the number of women in prison in Scotland, the Scottish Government is planning for an increase in that number.

There are a number of other options that would better deliver the recommendations in the report of the Commission on Women Offenders, which have not been considered by the Scottish Government. These could include, for example, the construction of a new small specialist prison - as envisaged in the CWO report - within the campus of Cornton Vale and surveying the possibility of converting available public or other accommodation, which might be used as local low security units to be managed by SPS or other agencies. Moving into 2015, there should be a proper examination of these options and the plan to build HMP Inverclyde should not proceed in its present form.

Find out more:

• Baroness Corston: Inverclyde prison 'will fail'
• 218 Service - Case Studies
• Dr Margaret Malloch - Women's Penal Policy in Scotland

HLS remain opposed to the Scottish Government's commitment to replace Cornton Vale with an even larger women's prison. This stands in direct contradiction to the plan laid out by The Angiolini Report, which illustrated the need for community based one stop shops. These centers would allow women to remain in their community and support them in dealing with their complex needs, such as addiction, homelessness, mental health problems and overcome histories of abuse - all of which we know to influence criminal behaviour.

The government's plan have received another damning indictment, this time from Baroness Jean Corston. In 2007 Corston carried out an extensive review of women's imprisonment in the UK which was widely welcomed and seen as one of the most significant policy reviews on this issue. The value of her insight and strength of her authority on what is best for women's penal policy cannot be overstated or underestimated, therefore. Spekaing to Hollyrood Magazine reviewed the plans for Inverclyde, her verdict being: 'It will fail'. The interview is a powerful statement, arguing that the cost of incarcerating women is too great a price to pay when there exist more effective alternatives, such as the 218 Project, the Willow Centre and Tomorrow's Women.

Read more:
HLS position on Inverclyde: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/20140618...
Hollyrood Magazine: http://www.holyrood.com/2014/09/tough-labour-2/
The Corston Report: http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/corston-report-march-2007.pdf