Minister calls for visiting centres in all Scottish jails

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill wants prison visiting centres established in all of Scotland’s jails.

The minister said a network of schemes would help foster strong family ties and make inmates less likely to reoffend after their release.

Mr MacAskill spoke out after touring the visitor centre at Perth Prison on Thursday and declaring it “an outstanding project”.

The unit, run by the Church of Scotland’s social care arm, Crossreach, is one of only three in Scotland.

The others, attached to prisons in Kilmarnock and Edinburgh, are also privately-run and funded.

Mr MacAskill said there was a case for opening similar centres at all 16 jails in Scotland, including Porterfield in Inverness, Craiginches in Aberdeen and Peterhead Prison.

“We have to remember that in places such as Cornton Vale Prison in Stirling, 50% of the children of prisoners will go on to become prisoners themselves, so we have got to break the cycle of offending,” he said.

“We have got to do that in a way that we know works – it’s about having a stable family to go back to, having a home to go to and some hope of education or employment to pick up on. This centre (Perth) ticks all of those boxes. It is a template of what we have got to provide.”

Crossreach welcomed Mr MacAskill’s comments and said it would be in favour of the Scottish Government providing statutory funding to run the centre, which costs about £60,000 a year.

The organisation’s chief executive, Peter Bailey, said: “Each year over 16,000 children in Scotland have a parent in prison, and over half of them witness their parent’s arrest.

“There is a well-recognised link between parental offending and the risk of children offending in the future, and more support has to be available for families of prisoners if we are to break intergenerational cycles of offending.”

A spokesman for the government said any application for funding to run a visitors’ centre would be “carefully considered” but stressed budgets were tight.

Opposition MSPs are unhappy that Aberdeen will be left without a prison after HMP Grampian opens in Peterhead in about four years.

They argue that forcing city-based visitors to make a 70-mile round trip to visit their loved ones will be detrimental to the rehabilitation process.

Mr MacAskill has argued that Peterhead is the best location for a new £100million, 500-capacity prison as men, women and young offenders from the north-east currently held in jails across the country will be able to serve their sentences nearer their families.