Rebuilding the Women’s Estate: Imaginary Penalities in Scottish Imprisonment, 2012–2023

ABSTRACT

This article explores a period during which the Scottish Prison Service aspired to a ‘golden age’ for imprisonment, tracing how a narrative of progress shaped a decade of struggle to close Scotland’s national prison for women: ‘Cornton Vale’. It provides new insights into how a project of prison modernisation resulted in widespread disappointment for both those centrally involved and those who felt excluded from decision-making. The paper employ’s Pat Carlen’s ‘imaginary penalities’ to frame how powerful penal actors who genuinely desired change acted in ways that contradicted not only the lived realities of those imprisoned but their own working realities and sense of the possible. Drawing from narrative interviews with actors central to both designing and opposing the new women’s estate, this study has implications for our understanding of Scottish imprisonment, as well as contributing to debates over the meaning of ‘progress’ in imprisonment more broadly.