Time to heal

IT'S lunchtime on a Wednesday and the women have gathered for soup and sandwiches. Over the din of their chatter, music blares from a speaker. Someone is dancing along to it. It could be a factory canteen, except that somewhere nearby is the drug dealer Mags Haney, head of Scotland's notorious 'family from hell'. Also eating lunch nearby are Tracey Reid, who threw her murdered daughter's body into a canal, and Cheryl Hanson, who killed her two-year-old son.

This is lunch-hour in HMP Cornton Vale, a break from the work tasks and the boredom. Scotland's only women's prison is a modern set of buildings that looks much like the housing estate next door, lying between a council scheme and the quaint shops of Bridge of Allan, near Stirling.

Doing his rounds, the new governor, Ian Gunn, enters the recreation area and for a brief moment everything comes to a halt. Eighty pairs of eyes watch as he makes his way across the room. It could be a daunting experience, being sized up by Scotland's most dangerous women. But he nods a few hellos and shrugs off the stares. The moment of drama is over, the eating, shouting and dancing resume.

Gunn has been in his post for three months and is the first male governor here for four years. If he felt no threat coming face to face with murderers in the dining hall, it is because he spent five years as governor of Peterhead Prison, which houses most of Scotland's convicted rapists and paedophiles, and dealt with controversies there ranging from slopping out to its uncertain future.

Still, little could prepare him for his first days at Cornton Vale. That week he walked the corridors in the evening to show there was nowhere he wouldn't go, even if it meant encountering women in their pyjamas getting ready for bed. "That first night the women were coming out scantily dressed, saying, 'How are you doing? Are you the new governor?' As a man, I found that quite difficult. But there are no no-go areas for me."

He also witnessed his first suicide attempt when a prisoner slashed the artery in her neck. "That told me straight away that there's a huge problem here. But I was very impressed by the professionalism and calmness of the staff," he says. They dealt with the incident swiftly and effectively and the woman was quickly hospitalised.

"Cornton Vale is a different challenge from Peterhead. Some things are exactly the same, but the differences appear when you get under the surface," he says. "Here, there is an emphasis on self-harm - that is the biggest difference. A large number of offenders have a history of drug abuse or have mental-health problems."

The near-miss was a brutal introduction to Cornton Vale's biggest problem. Less than a decade ago it gained notoriety when 11 women killed themselves between 1997 and 2002. They included 19-year-old Angela Bollan from Renton, West Dunbartonshire, who was locked in her cell for five hours to "cool off", and Michelle McElver, a 28-year-old mother of two who hanged herself 24 hours after she arrived on remand for armed robbery.

The suicides and attempted suicides triggered a series of fatal-accident inquiries and much criticism from those opposed to locking up all but the most serious female offenders. They also earned the jail the nicknames 'Cornton Hell' and 'Vale of Tears', which did not cease even after stringent anti-suicide measures were established. There might have been a reduction in the number of deaths, but the women coming through its doors today are still riddled with the same psychiatric, drug and abuse problems.

Most people cannot comprehend how the likes of Haney, Reid and Hanson could bring themselves to commit the crimes that led to their incarceration. Hanson is serving nine years for culpable homicide. Her toddler was starved and beaten by her boyfriend and left to die alone in a freezing room. The trial jury saw mortuary photographs of 33-month-old Scott Saunders' body that showed his ribs and shoulder blades sticking out and 150 bruises and abrasions. His kidneys were failing and there were changes in other organs which a pathologist said were normally only seen in starving Third World babies. The couple had locked him in an unheated room with bare floorboards for days on end while they ate out and took heroin.

But Gunn insists it is not his job to punish his prisoners. That is the job of the courts. His role is to try to look after them during their sentence and he sees many of them as no more than victims themselves.

On admission to Cornton Vale, almost all prisoners test positive for drugs. Research has shown that 82% have been sexually, physically or emotionally abused, 38% have tried to commit suicide before entering prison, 40% have a history of self-harm, 56% have a history of clinical mental illness, 70% are single parents or carers, and 88% score two out of five in the list of predictors for self-harm.

Yet, although the suicides have stopped, there are still concerns about Cornton Vale's regime. Rosie Kane MSP, who served six days for failing to pay a £300 fine, described her time there as "one of the saddest experiences of my life". She said morale was at rock bottom among prisoners and staff alike and the prison suffered from a culture of bullying and aggression.

Gunn is in an extraordinarily difficult position because most members of the public want to see criminals punished. Half of all the women in Cornton Vale have been convicted of violent offences. But there is a growing consensus among policy-makers that most women in prison pose little or no threat to the public and that the criminal-justice system should, instead of locking them up, divert them to services such as drug treatment centres that can help deal with their underlying problems.

In his few months at Cornton Vale, Gunn has been observing the regime and believes that, although the anti-suicide strategy has worked well and saved lives, other strategies have a role to play in helping the women. Now he is planning some dramatic changes. It will involve taking risks, he admits. But he is prepared for that and hopes his staff will back him.

"There is an atmosphere around the place," he says. "There is a fear - staff have a fear of the next suicide. Our strategy for dealing with suicides is great and the number has fallen over the years. What I need to do is take a fresh look at how we deal with the very damaged women who come in who are self-harmers or who are considered likely to self-harm. Because of the way we are, we might restrict them too much because of the risk that they might self-harm. We don't give them the freedom they may require for their general mental health."

Cornton Vale's anti-suicide strategy involves putting women at risk in anti-ligature cells - rooms stripped bare of all but a mattress and a toilet. Prisoners are taken out of their own clothes and made to wear heavy blue shorts and shirts that cannot be torn apart. Instead of sheets they have a thin duvet made from the same material.

Gunn is considering giving some of the more vulnerable women greater freedoms to see whether that helps them get better. The women on suicide watch are currently locked in the bare cells and observed every 15 minutes. Changes could involve moving those at risk of suicide from their current hall, one of the most depressing in the prison, to its newest hall, which has a low level of security and is occupied by those who have a track record of good behaviour. It might involve not forcing all of them to wear the special non-rip clothes, and it may even involve them moving around the prison more freely. In short, it would mean giving staff the confidence to take risks. It is a controversial move that is bound to attract criticism, but it's one Gunn insists is vital to improve the prison's culture.

"My initial perceptions are that we are averse to taking risks, but prisons sometimes need to take risks," says Gunn. "The reason for this is what might be said at the next fatal-accident inquiry. Staff think they are going to get blamed, which is not how we should be running a prison. They think they are going to get blamed for something if they take the risk of giving this very damaged person a better quality of life.

"What does suicide watch do to a prisoner's mental health? Are we using this as a safeguard against criticism of staff? I want staff to feel their work is not going to be undermined by what a sheriff says about them at a fatal-accident inquiry. I want us to care for people who are self-harming. We have extremely high levels of care and investment in nursing."

The most fortunate 84 inmates are those who have a place in Wallace House, the prison's newest block. Each cell is bright and spacious and has an en-suite shower. "It's like a Premier Travel Inn," says Gunn. "It's not like a prison cell at all." Places in Wallace House are given to those who are free of drugs and who have demonstrated good behaviour, and who are therefore deemed to be at a low risk of getting into further trouble or trying to escape. Its construction is only temporary and has a lifespan of 15 years or so. "You could kick your way out of it reasonably quickly," Gunn admits. Prisoners in Wallace have a key to their own door and have freedom of movement within their own section.

"It's the best accommodation that we have, but it is not being used by the people who perhaps need it most. There are reasons for that, because if you put people at risk in a cell that could be broken within three or four hours, there are things they could harm themselves with. But if we really want to stop self-harming, perhaps we should have prisoners out and about more often."

Currently remand prisoners are placed in Ross House, which he admits is "dark and dingy". The first 28 days in prison are the most critical because that is when prisoners are going through drug withdrawal. "Why do remand prisoners get the worst accommodation? We might have to look to our policies about where we place people."

His plan is controversial but the situation is desperate, as pointed out by Andrew McLellan, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, in his most recent report in May 2006. McLellan said some of the inmates had admitted they were in prison by choice: they had deliberately offended to ensure their admission to Cornton Vale because they felt safer inside than outside.

"Any report on Cornton Vale must take into account the desperate state in which most of the prisoners are when they arrive at the prison gate," the report concluded. "'Desperate' does not mean 'distressed', although it often includes that. It means the combination of ill-health, both mental and physical, addiction (especially and almost universally to heroin), the terrible need to attack their own bodies, and personal histories of great sadness, very often including abuse and sexual abuse as children. No one who has not been in Cornton Vale can grasp the amount of pain that is hidden behind its fence. No one who has been in Cornton Vale can forget it. These are very damaged women.

"There is no doubt that being in prison can do some things for some women. It is a terrible comment on Scotland today that it is easy to meet prisoners who feel safer in prison than they do outside. But it would be wrong to suppose that for most prisoners in Cornton Vale their time of imprisonment is likely to be an opportunity to be healed of the desperate things that are wrong with them in body, mind and spirit when they are admitted."

Now Gunn will attempt to help those he can. But the inevitable risk of his strategy is that someone will not be helped by the greater freedoms and will succeed in an attempt to take her own life. He is apprehensive but pragmatic about the possibility that there may be further suicides at Cornton Vale.

"I don't want anyone to die in custody, but there are going to be deaths in custody and I know the focus will be on the establishment again," says Gunn. "I want to be here for a few years if I can, and do something substantial. Prison is not to punish people. We are here to care for people. They have lost their freedom - that's their punishment. We have to give them back their dignity and self-esteem."