A new woman’s custody unit is to be created on the site of Our Lady’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Dundee, despite opposition to the plans from residents.
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) confirmed its preferred location for the new centre on Friday.
The Hilltown unit will provide accommodation for around 20 female prisoners who have been assessed as suitable for serving part of their sentence closer to the community.
It is hoped the new units will reduce the risk of re-offending by maintaining the women’s links with their communities and families.
Our Lady’s, which will close in the summer as pupils move to the new Coldside Community Campus on the site of the former Alexander Street multis, was one of two sites under consideration in the ward.
The other was at Rosebank Primary School, which is also scheduled to shut this year.
An SPS spokesman said: “In September 2017, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice announced that the location of the first two Community Custody Units (CCU) in Scotland would be in Maryhill, Glasgow and in the city of Dundee at a site yet to be identified.
“Today, SPS are able to confirm that we have identified our preferred site for the location of this unit.
“This will be on the site of the current Our Lady’s Roman Catholic Primary School which is scheduled for closure and relocation later this year.
“Community engagement is a key priority of this project and now that we have identified a preferred site it is our intention to hold information events in the coming weeks to allow the residents of the local communities the opportunity to see and hear for themselves how we envisage the CCU working.”
Rosebank Street resident Tom Henney, who organised a petition against locating the custody unit in Coldside, said he still believed it was the wrong place to house offenders.
He said the area’s well-documented problems with drugs would make the women’s rehabilitation all the harder.
Mr Henney said: “Our main complaint is Coldside is not a good place for it at all due to the problems with drugs.
“To try to rehabilitate people in the community under these circumstances will make it far too easy for people to go off the rails.
“It’s also right opposite the new school and there are houses all around it.
“There is no logic to it.”
