WOMEN WITH DRUG HABIT TO ESCAPE PRISON

Counselling scheme will replace custodial sentences after increase in
female suicides

Women who commit crimes to finance a drug habit are to avoid being punished
by the courts under a new scheme to reduce the female prison population in
Scotland.

Scottish Office ministers have become alarmed about the growing numbers of
young women who have committed suicide while being held in Cornton Vale,
near Stirling, the country's only jail for women.

They have now agreed to launch an experimental programme under which women
will, for the first time, avoid charges if they undergo intensive drugs
counselling. Studies have revealed that jail sentences for women with drug
problems, many of them prostitutes, do nothing to end the pattern of
behaviour that leads to repeat offending.

The new scheme, to be unveiled by the Home Affairs minister Henry McLeish
later this month, will attempt to initiate changes in lifestyles that may
be more effective.

McLeish approved the scheme following a critical report by Clive
Fairweather, the chief inspector of prisons, and Angus Skinner, chief
inspector of social work for Scotland, on the use of custody for women
offenders. The numbers have been steadily rising since the late 1980s but
were brought into sharp focus by the deaths of seven young women, some of
them drug users, in Cornton Vale between 1995 and this year.

The trial will be carried out at the Glasgow Drugs Centre, which looks
after 400 women with severe drug-related problems. Financed by a 100,000
grant from Glasgow City Council, it follows interviews with women drug
users on how they could be effectively helped to break the cycle of crime.

Netta Maciver, director of the drugs organisation Turning Point, said: "I
listened carefully to their stories of how they came to use drugs and the
effect that it had on their lives. None of them felt that prison was the
answer to their problems and was not a deterrent."

Maciver insists that the project would only be suitable for women who are
committed to dealing with their drug habit and not to committing offences
in the future. It would not work for those women who do not have the will
to change. If a woman was arrested for offences such as soliciting, theft
or breach of the peace, a report would go to the procurator fiscal. The
fiscal would then receive a report from Maciver's team on whether the woman
should be considered for the project. It was then up to the fiscal to
decide. If the fiscal agreed that the project offered the best chance of
avoiding furhter offences, a detailed study of the woman's background would
be drawn up to plan a course of action.

"We will look at the women as a whole, their drug use and dependency, their
financial situation, housing situation and employment," Maciver said. "Once
we have the full picture then we will be able to look at ways of working
with them to improve their lives. For example, if they do not have a home,
we can try and help get accommodation and some stability."

If further offences are committed while the woman is on the project, the
fiscal will be informed. "It will be up to him or her to look at the
seriosness of the offence and to say whether the person should be taken off
the project and dealt with by the courts."

One of the women being considered for the project said if it had been
available to her when she was a teenager it might have saved her from a
life of prostitution and petty crime.

Libby, 22, a heroin user, said: "At last people seem to be trying to treat
us as people needing help instead of criminals who should be swept off the
streets and locked away."

Brought up in a succession of children's homes, she has more or less lived
on the streets since the age of 15, turning to prostitution to provide
money for drugs.

She was first sent to Cornton Vale at the age of 16 for a minor offence. "I
was pretty streetwise, but I was still a child really," she said. "Nothing
prepared me for prison and when I got inside it was awful. The other women
bullied me - they wanted my visitors to bring in drugs for them. When it
didn't happen, I got a severe beating. I was only in for three weeks but I
came out a different person, harder and tougher. It was no deterrent at
all."

A return visit to Cornton Vale four years later - for unpaid fines and
shoplifting - also failed to alter her behaviour.

"This time I knew what to expect. I let people know I was tougher and I did
some bullying. Prison was just a waste of time. It didn't stop me taking
heroin or straighten out my life."

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)