Scotland Finally Realizes Female Imprisonment is Counterproductive

Female imprisonment reform in Scotland has been a long time coming, but now at last there is acceptance that incarceration provides no significant reduction in re-offending.

Sixteen years ago, then chief inspector of prisons Clive Fairweather said Scotland’s female prison population should be reduced from 200 to 100, on the basis that many prisoners were low-level offenders.

Photo by Susan Madden Lankford

Photo by Susan Madden Lankford

Built in 1975, HM Prison Cornton Vale comprises a total of 217 cells in its five houses. It now houses almost all female adults and young offenders in Scotland.  In April 1999, the separation of adults and young offenders was attained.

Cornton Vale has been criticized for overcrowding–with 353 inmates being held there in November 2005–and the high number of suicides which have taken place there. Between 1997 and 2002, 11 women killed themselves while serving sentences at Cornton Vale. In 2010, Brigadier Hugh Munro declared the prison in a “state of crisis”, citing overcrowding, two-hour waits for the toilet, cold meals, lack of activities and a deep problem of prisoner boredom which was impeding rehabilitation.

In 2006, 98% of the inmates had addiction issues, 80% had mental health problems and 75% were survivors of abuse. The prison also holds children, in particular the babies of inmates, who are imprisoned alongside their mothers, and teenagers where there is no suitable accommodation available in young offenders institutions.

In 2006 it was announced that the practice of “double cuffing” all inmates who are in labor to a custody officer until second stage labor and immediately re-handcuffed after giving birth, had ended.

But it was not until 2012 that radical reform became a realistic prospect. A comprehensive report by the Commission on Women Offenders, led by former Lord Advocate Dame Elish Agiolini, made 37 recommendations, including the closure of Cornton Vale, its replacement with a smaller prison and the addition of regional units.

At the report’s heart was a recognition that the existing system was of little benefit to either those punished or to the public. Dame Elish highlighted the “significant cost to society” of locking up women whose addiction or mental health problems were not going to be helped by a stretch in jail.

Locking up those who break the law is, of course, a deterrent, but jailing women can have a severely negative impact on families and on children in particular. This can perpetuate and extenuate circumstances which contributed to the offending in the first place.

The commission found that 75%  of prisoners were sentenced to six months or less, but their rate of re-offending was a desperate 80%. Imprisonment did not reform female inmates’ characters; it merely consolidated low self-esteem.

Hearteningly, Dame Elish’s key findings are behind the course of action taken by the Scottish Government very recently, albeit only after the scrapping of plans for a new women’s “super prison” earlier this year. A new national prison taking up to 100 inmates will be built on the Cornton Vale site, along with five small custodial centers across the country which would give the female prison population a maximum capacity of 180.

It is also encouraging that the units will provide “intensive support” for those affected by alcohol and drug addictions, mental health problems and domestic abuse trauma.

These measures are designed to break the cycle of re-offending, which is the key to any kind of progress on this issue. Time will tell if it works, but we know for sure that the existing arrangements do not work. Imprisonment reinforces rather than treats habits, and a new method of addressing these problems has to be attempted.

Critics will question whether 180 jail places in Scotland are sufficient. The answer depends on how successful these attempts are at achieving rehabilitation, but the reduced figure should help to focus minds on using prison only as a last alternative from now on.

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