Additional Funding to Tackle Female Offending Announced
29 January 2015
This week Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson, announced an additional 1.5 million pounds of funding will be made available for projects designed to tackle female offending in Scotland. This follows the decision from earlier in the week to scrap plans for a new female prison at HMP Inverclyde with the Scottish Government and Scottish Prison Service instead opting to consult on introducing smaller, regional, community-based custodial facilities across Scotland.
Mr Matheson said “Female offenders have very different needs to their male counterparts and require very specific support. If we are going to break the cycle of re-offending, 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.”
Further information can be found on The Scottish Government website.
