WOMEN in Scotland are opting for prison to escape their lives outside, according to a EU-funded report released today.
The study claims some women face such huge problems that they regard a jail term as “a refuge,” it was reported last night.
Dr David Shewan, of Glasgow Caledonian University, conducted the Scottish research for the report, which also covered Spain, Poland, Germany and Austria. It is understood he found some women chose jail to escape abusive partners, while others used a prison term to try to stabilise debt problems or drug addiction.
Scotland has one of the fastest growing female prisoner populations in Europe, despite Executive promises to reduce the problem.
| The prison environment for women in Scotland must be pleasant if that many women are using it as a retreat from problems. |
| Found by Bubba Martin. |
That many? I saw no reference to numbers.
I doubt jail is “pleasant” and what is being compared and chosen is the lesser to two unpleasant situations.
I wonder where Michael Moore placed Scotland in his healthcare rankings???
Unless things have changed very recently there is only one female prison in Scotland with (according to wikipedia) a capacity of 230.
This is for a nation of more than 5 million people.
Just spoke to a friend who works for the prison service who conformed that the present female prison population in Scotland is less than 250.
This is poor journalism based on the work of an academic at one of the least respected educational institutions (I wont dignify it by calling it a university) in the UK.
Nothing to see here. Move along
#2
Slow news day in Scotland then.
Probably trying to Paris Hilton to stay there….
Cornton Vale prison is the only womans prison in Scotland. There have been several recent reports into the state of the jail in which it has been ranked as a failing its in mates with both drugs and suicide rates higher that expected.
“It has has been criticised for overcrowding, with 353 inmates being held there in November 2005 and the high number of suicides which have taken place there. Eleven women killed themselves while serving sentences at Corton Vale between 1997 and 2002,” – from Wikipedia
D
The article describes prisons as refuges from degeneracy, rather than as con jamborees. That is basically what the modern prison is meant to be. The protestant flavour of North American prisons; punishment and retribution by incarceration, forced labour as moral atonement, destruction of personal identity through militarist discipline, cruelty to a few as examples to the rest, needs to be considered as barbarism rather than as a model of civilised life.
Good or poor journalism, why do I care Scotland women are seeking a better life, albeit in prison???
This is just one of those classical example of how shoe-leather journalism has died. This is not ‘advocacy’ journalism, it’s certainly not journalism serving the public through skeptical investigation. All that’s left is baseless emotional journalism, not to inform but to entertain the brain dead public.
Sorry I find this journalistic style more annoying, not entertaining or informatively engaging. Yes I responded, but; it seems like it’s one of those children moments where the child says, haha I got you to look. IMHO!
Good grief that’s a real movie… gotta rent it!
Mary Woronov……! (movie box) Remember her from Eating Raoul, back in ’82? Also Death Race 2000, and of course she was with Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
7&8–Bravo. Always nice to have a different perspective on an issue revealing (my own) cultural bias.
Somethings wrong with America when we have the most people in jail and seem to clamor for more jails to be built to house the likes of Paris Hilton.
It was only 4-5 years ago a protest movement was starting. Seems more money was in the budget for new jails than for new schools. Don’t hear about it anymore. Haliburton must of gotten the contract.
We all do have the societies we have as a direct result of the values that are in play. I think GOUSA has some root core problems not even recognized as such- – – – yet.
I posted the story because I thought it was an interesting situation; women wanting to go to jail to escape from life. I’ve only heard of this happening when a lifer is paroled and has been incarcerated so long that he can’t cope outside of prison.