The Government will today dump the problem of prostitution in Glasgow on to the city council, writes James Freeman, Home Affairs Correspondent.
A ground-breaking report on the imprisonment of women in Scotland, which will be unveiled today by Scottish Office Home Affairs Minister Henry McLeish, contains a ticking time-bomb on prostitution.
Prepared by Clive Fairweather, the chief inspector of prisons in Scotland, and Angus Skinner, the chief inspector of social work in Scotland, it draws attention to the enormous imbalance between women from Glasgow jailed for soliciting or non-payment of prostitution fines, believed to be around 700 annually, compared to just six from Edinburgh.
The central thrust of the Government's report is that far fewer women should be jailed in Scotland, because the vast majority who are sent to Cornton Vale are not a serious menace to the community, merely a nuisance.
Taking the Glasgow prostitutes out of the Cornton Vale equation would go a long way to bringing numbers down to proportions where the staff could make a therapeutic impact on those remaining prisoners.
Out of the shadows Page 12
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