Women offenders offered alternative to prison

Adult female offenders in Glasgow are to be given an alternative
to prison as plans for the opening of Scotland’s first ‘time
out’ centre were announced by the Scottish executive’s deputy
justice minister Dr Richard Simpson.

The £2.6 million centre will provide 14 residential beds
and places on a day care basis where adult female offenders will be
helped by social work and health professionals being offered
detoxification, advocacy and counselling.

Support will be provided to the women after they stop attending
the centre, and a key role of the project will be to engage other
services such as education, sexual health counselling, addiction
rehabilitation and employment.

The time out centre will be seen as a welcome alternative to
Scotland’s only female gaol, Cornton Vale, which has been
beset by problems such as a high suicide rate.

Jim Coleman, deputy leader of Glasgow council, said that many
women get caught up in a “roundabout” of drugs and prostitution,
prison, re-offending and prison. Coleman said: “This is the first
serious attempt to take women out of that loop and out of the
criminal justice system.”