Chamber and committees

My question is probably for Gerry O’Donnell. It is about funding for secure care facilities for young people.

You will be aware that there is a Scottish Government policy move, which I thoroughly endorse, that all children under 18 will be held in secure care rather than go to a young offenders institution such as Polmont. The funding model has been causing problems for some time, and the submission from HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland refers to the importance of adequately resourcing secure care to receive children under the age of 18. It says that a “different funding model” will be required.

The inspectorate says that, at the moment, the model requires the facilities

“to maintain full capacity and spaces are routinely taken by children from England to meet the financial imperatives.”

I know that to be true, because there is a secure care facility in my constituency.

What is your view on that point? I do not know whether you feel that you are in a position to comment, but are you aware of it?

Thank you, convener. I will try to keep this brief.

I will ask some questions about violence against women and girls. I thank you, Lord Advocate, for speaking so passionately about the subject and its unique nature. I whole-heartedly agree with everything that you said on that. You also said in your opening statement that funding was adequate for the normal level of cases based on pre-pandemic levels. Given that the number of solemn cases of domestic abuse has gone up by 20 per cent since 2019 and given the huge backlogs about which we have spoken, is this the time for something radical? Would you be in favour of a specialist court? Will you have enough funding to cope with the extreme figures that you mentioned?

That is fine. I just wanted to put on record that there is a sea change happening, and that the funding could possibly change.

It is Collette Stevenson.

Our focus is on all aspects of women in the justice system. Far too many women in prison have mental health problems or have been victims of domestic abuse and are brain injured. There are huge issues that we need to look at. The cross-party group on women’s justice made a start on that work in the previous parliamentary session, and I hope that, in this session, we can dig deep into the issues and try to effect a lot of change.

When I was the convener of the cross-party group on women’s justice, which was formed in 2018, it became increasingly clear that what we were discussing involved children and families, too. There was already a cross-party group on families affected by imprisonment, and its members regularly attended and contributed to our group’s meetings. As a result, it seemed logical and sensible to merge the two groups in this parliamentary session, given that we shared the same agenda on many occasions and spoke about the same problems faced by women going through the justice system and the effect on their wider families.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

That was part of the work of the previous group, and, now that the units are nearing completion, we are very keen to press the need for contact between mothers and children. We are asking for mother-and-baby units to be part of these establishments in order to allow mothers to bond with their babies instead of being separated from them. As I said, it has been part of our work—we have taken evidence on it from the Scottish Prison Service on many occasions—and we very much see such work as on-going and necessary.

One such measure would be highlighting the huge issues that women on remand face. There are still far too many women on remand and in custody. Although we are 10 years on from the Angiolini report, which concluded that we have to stop locking women up for low-level offences, that is still happening. There are many causes of such offending—addiction problems, mental health problems, chaotic lifestyles and so on—and, at that level, prison is not the place for women. Our objective is to keep pressing the issue and to look at what are pretty radical new ways of keeping women out of prison. After all, prison does not help them; indeed, it just makes the situation that they find themselves in much worse, given the mental health effects, and so on. Moreover, it affects not just them but the wider family and their children. Only 5 per cent of children whose mother is in prison remain in the family home, which indicates how disruptive such an approach is. We are focusing on all aspects of how the situation could be improved and on how a much more holistic method might be brought in.