SUICIDES could increase at Scotland’s only jail for women because of overcrowding and increasing staff sickness, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons said yesterday.
The problems at Cornton Vale were a “recipe for disaster”, Clive Fairweather said in his final report. The prison had improved greatly since 1996 but during a visit in September he found problems which, he said, stemmed from the record number of women in Scotland being sent the jail, often for petty offences.
There have been three suicides since May 2001 and Mr Fairweather said that he was worried that the number would rise.
Cornton Vale houses an average of 290 women compared with about 180 in 1996. Plans to transfer 50 women to Greenock prison, a male jail, were criticised