News In Focus
16 February 2010
No free bed and board at new prison, says MacAskill
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill visited the site of the new £100m Low Moss prison in Bishopbriggs yesterday - and promised it would not be used to house "people whose offending could be dealt with more effectively in the community".
When completed in early 2012, the prison will have the capacity to hold 700 prisoners and will replace a smaller prison on the same site. The prison wil be publicly run, a decision taken by the SNP Government soon after it came to power.
Mr MacAskill said: "We need tough and secure prisons for those who need to be detained, but we do not need people getting free bed and board at the taxpayer’s expense when they should be paying back by hard work in the community.
"That represents our best chance of breaking the cycle of reoffending and delivering a safer, stronger Scotland."
He added that the prison proved the Scottish Government was investing in a prison estate fit for the 21st century.
"One of the first decisions I took as Justice Secretary was to announce that the prison being built on this site would be a public prison - Scotland's first entirely new public prison in many, many years.
"We are investing around £100m in the building of this new prison. This is an investment not just in our criminal justice system but an investment in jobs for the construction industry - vital in the current economic climate.
"We are investing £120m a year in developing a prison estate fit for the 21st century. But what we will not do is build even more prisons simply to fill them with people whose offending could be dealt with more effectively in the community.”