Too many women jailed, MSPs hear

The lord advocate has raised concern over numbers of women behind bars

Too many women are locked up in Scotland, the head of the prison service has warned.

Scottish Prison Service chief executive Mike Ewart also told a Holyrood inquiry that jails were used in a wholly inappropriate way.

His comments came as MSPs began a probe into female offenders in Scotland.

Holyrood's equal opportunities committee is investigating whether female prisoners get enough help to keep them from reoffending.

The inquiry came after the committee last year looked into the high number of inmates at Scotland's only women's prison, Cornton Vale, near Stirling.

We lock up far too many people and use prison in a wholly inappropriate way Mike Ewart Scottish Prison Service

Mr Ewart said Cornton Vale had 431 inmates, including 36 women released under home detention curfew with an electronic tag.

"By any means that is too many and the proportion of women serving short-term sentences in that population is too large," he said.

Mr Ewart went on: "The fact is that we lock up far too many people and use prison in a wholly inappropriate way."

He told the inquiry that justice officials had to think very carefully about how prison was used in relation to women offenders.

'Real concern'

"We can do something for the women who are put into our care and it is our intention and desire across the prison service to do as much good as we can," he said.

"But we know by the very act of introducing people to prison we are making them more likely to reoffend and that can not be the way ahead."

Mr Ewart said pressures on the system made it difficult to help female prisoners, who, he said, were more likely to suffer from drug or drink addiction and mental illness than men behind bars.

Scotland's top prosecutor, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini, previously told the committee there was a "very, very real concern" about the number of women in prison and that they were suffering.

She has drawn a link between increasing levels of violence among females and problems with binge drinking in young women.

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