Scottish Prisons Assessment and Review of Outcomes for Women (SPAROW): executive summary

Who are the women in the CCUs? (see Chapter 6 in the full report)

As a first step in identifying women considered suitable for transfer to a CCU, the Governor of HMP Stirling, along with one or both of the CCU managers, scrutinise the SPS prisoner database to identify women who could potentially ‘fit the CCU criteria’ (LM 002). All women who fit the criteria will be reviewed.

Interviews with Strategic Managers and First Line Managers provided information on the processes regarding the identification of women for the CCUs. Women may be put forward for consideration for transfer on the recommendation of their Personal Officers. They may also be put forward by CCU staff who visit the women's facilities at HMP Greenock, HMP YOI Grampian and HMP YOI Polmont to identify women they consider meet the criteria and/or who wish to move to a CCU.

The majority of First Line Managers and many residential officers had worked in more than one prison establishment and spoke about the different approaches taken between management teams and the different cultures around risk assessment and progression that had developed. The general feeling was that the priority status given to Integrated Case Management (ICM) could be quite different depending on the senior management team in place at that time. The use of the Integrated Case Management process, the multi-disciplinary Risk Management Team and the Women’s Case Management Board (for short-term prisoners) appeared to some staff to be labyrinthine and perplexing. In particular, many officers found the Risk Management Team (RMT) processes confusing and reported that they were given no formal training or guidance on how it works in practice.

The population of the CCUs changed considerably over the duration of the research. For the most part, long-term prisoners and those at the ‘top-end’ of their sentence viewed the process to progress out of closed conditions from another prison establishment into a CCU to be more protracted and onerous than the process for short-term prisoners. Such a move was seen to be a privilege. Long-term prisoners felt that they were subject to more stringent conditions before they could be considered suitable for progression. Some short-term prisoners were transferred to a CCU in the early stages of their sentence after having spent relatively little time in closed conditions (i.e. weeks). Some long-term prisoners and ‘top-enders’ had spent a considerable number of years in prison and had progressed through various stages, and were required to complete specific programmes within other prison establishments, before arriving in a CCU. The significance of categorisations of short-term prisoner, long-term prisoner and ‘top-end’ women and the progression stages they signify should not be underestimated. As several women told us, they play a key determining role in the ways in which living in a CCU is experienced. There are stark differences in what women consider ‘privileges’ that are based on prisoner categorisation – and these can also be a key site of resentment between women who are learning to live together in new surroundings.