THIS is the first look inside the UK’s newest prison – which has no cells, prisoners are given pocket money and even murderers get to sleep in a double bed.
Britain’s first women’s community custody unit – a small-scale detention centre – was opened in Dundee in August 2022.
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The 16-space Bella Centre has a focus on “custody in the community” and helps inmates near the end of their sentence to be supported to live independently.
The building, which is the middle of the city’s Hilltown ward, is surrounded by residential properties and has been designed to blend into its surroundings.
The experimental centre comes with a hefty price tag of around £11.6million to set up – and can only accommodate 16 women at a time.
And for the first time in two years, the SPS invited the media into the innovative centre to give the public a glimpse into the facility that has been developed from international best practices.
Images shared by Channel Four News – who were given the chance to see inside the facilities – show how the unit was specifically designed to not look like a prison.
The Bella Centre has shared house-style accommodation with communal living spaces downstairs and individual bedrooms upstairs.
There are no bars on the windows, or barbed wire in the garden, and CCTV cameras are hidden from sight.
Prisoners are given their own room with a double bed and a space to work and study.
Each room also comes with an en-suite bathroom and shower.
Inmates are even allowed to get a job and work locally in the community, including walking to their place of work unsupervised.
Channel Four speak with resident Anna, who had her name changed, about her time in the unit.
Anna was convicted of murdering her ex-partner.
But has now won enough trust to work in the community and walks unaccompanied to prepare food at a local lunch club.
She said: “We are not in prison to be punished.
“Our punishment is loss of liberty. Our punishment is births, deaths and marriages that we can’t be involved in.
“You know when things happen, sorry, you know when things happen on the outside.
“You’re not part of your family now, grow and move on, you are not part of that.”
The walls of the property are painted soft colours and the furniture is soft pastels.
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Women develop life skills by taking responsibility for their own personal care, laundry and housekeeping.
They are given a mobile phone to communicate with lags when they are out and about under a curfew.
There is also a community hub where the prisoners can meet with visitors and take part in activities put on by local services such as addiction and recovery and social work.
Inspiring messages about hope, forgiveness and redemption are hung on the walls or tied to the trees in the community garden.
They are also given an allowance of around £40 a week to order food to cook for themselves in the fully-equipped kitchen which includes access to knives.
There is even a garden and a play park for children visiting the site.
The Scottish Prison Service said the unit was designed to provide “safe and secure accommodation” which is “trauma-informed and gender-specific” which allowed the women inside to be embedded into local communities and services.
It is one of two Community Custody Units for women in Scotland – the second one which homes 24 prisoners in Glasgow.
One resident described Bella as a place that “builds people up”.
She said: “The discourse and narrative of prisoners is that they’re scumbags but a lot of us are full of guilt, remorse and shame before we even come to prison – the lifestyle we lead, the things that have happened to us, the trauma that we’ve been through.”
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The SPS said the centre allowed for the “women to benefit from closer community contact and access to local services, to create and sustain independence in preparation for successful reintegration into the community.”
A spokesperson added: “The centre provides a range of evidence-based interventions focused on reflection, reparation and rehabilitation in an environment of safety, respect and dignity.”
