Meeting of the Parliament 28 January 2015
I commend Alison McInnes, not just for her very measured and thoughtful speech, but because she has single-handedly kept the focus on the delivery of the recommendations of Elish Angiolini’s commission. She has not been opportunistic; she has fought her case inside and outside the Parliament, and not just in the chamber but in committee.
Alison McInnes and I are not joined at the hip, but she and I visited the 218 centre a long time ago. Its regime is one of tough love, and there are people who go on that course who regress. Mention has been made of electronic tagging. Electronic tagging on its own is not a solution, because people can lapse. The women at the 218 centre are supervised and the regime is very tough. As has been said, the facility is residential and can take only 12 people at a time. The course lasts for months, so it is intensive. It is an excellent facility.
I get a bit tetchy when I am told the blooming obvious. Some of us have known for a long time how many women offenders there are, the percentage of them who committed minor offences, the number who are on remand and the number who are victims. We have known all that for a long time. Many people in prison, not just women, are themselves victims.
I want to provide some background. On 5 August 2014, Colin McConnell and the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice came before the Justice Committee to set out their plans for Inverclyde as a more immediate solution to the pressing problems that were faced at Cornton Vale. Again, I agree with Alison McInnes—I might be destroying her career. Kate Donegan is a reformer, as is Colin McConnell; I have a lot of time for them. They might or might not have been constrained by the previous cabinet secretary, but they were certainly not developing a superprison. I object to that term, as it suggests the creation of an Alcatraz. The facility that was envisaged was to be nothing like that; it was to be more like a community setting in which people could wander about, have a sense of ordinary life and be supported. Regardless of whether the new prison was the right thing to pursue, it was never going to be an Alcatraz. Let us get away from the idea that it was to be a superprison. The idea was to allow a holistic approach to be taken to the care and management of women.
Of course we had concerns about local access, which were raised by members across the committee.