Additional funding for female offenders

29 Jan 2015 12:02 PM

£1.5m to be made available for next year.

More funding is being made available for projects designed to tackle female offending in Scotland after Justice Secretary Michael Matheson yesterday announced an additional £1.5 million would be made available.

It follows the decision earlier this week that plans for a female prison at HMP Inverclyde will not go ahead and instead the Scottish Government and Scottish Prison Service will consult on introducing smaller regional and community-based custodial facilities across the country.

The Scottish Government has already provided £22.5 million between 2007 and 2016 to fund a range of projects across Scotland designed to address the specific issues fuelling female offending such as alcohol, drugs or mental health issues.

Mr Matheson said yesterday:

“As I said earlier this week, I’ve listened carefully to the views expressed by a number of key interest groups since taking up post and there is no doubt in my mind we need to be bolder and take a more radical and ambitious approach toward female offending in Scotland.

“Female offenders have very different needs to their male counterparts and require very specific support.

“If we are going to break the cycle of reoffending, we need to ensure that links to the family and community can be maintained, whilst targeted work is undertaken to address underlying issues fuelling crime such as drink, drugs, mental health and trauma. There are some fantastic projects across the country working hard to end the revolving door to our prisons and we need to do all we can to support them.

“That is why today I am announcing this additional £1.5 million funding to support community-based female offending projects, which evidence shows is a much more effective way to deal with women who offend in Scotland.”