MARYHILL'S new alternative prison will improve the lives of local women and children, one of Scotland's top legal minds has said.

The move to open community custody units came in the wake of a report into how best to deal with female offenders by Dame Elish Angiolini, former Lord Advocate of Scotland.

Last month locals in the area told the Evening Times of their concerns the unit would bring trouble to the area.

But Dame Elish said: "If it is in the community then it will be people from the community who will be there.

"They are going to these units because prison will not do them any good.

"People want crime to stop but when people go to prison they become better criminals because they meet people who can teach them how.

"The units are about changing behaviour, giving them skills and breaking that pattern of crime.

"We talk about the importance of early years and early years starts with the mother, by getting them out of the cycle of crime."

Dame Elish, now Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, said when she was a young girl in Govan the family home was broken into seven times.

She had no sympathy for the perpetrator, who made her family feel insecure and unsettled in their own home, until she became a prosecutor and gained new insight.

She added: "We are spending a fortune imprisoning people when it has no impact on their behaviour.

"There are people who will fail and fall off, people who are very damaged and find it very difficult but the idea you can got to prison for three months, say, and become clear of a drug addiction, is not workable."

The 57-year-old was back in Glasgow this week to give the annual John Wheatley lecture, organised by Parkhead Housing Association.

Speaking ahead of her lecture, Dame Elish remembered her first real insight into the importance of social housing and how it can change lives.

As a 16-year-old in Govan, where she grew up, the parish priest had asked Elish to visit an 83-year-old woman who was blind and lived alone on the 21st floor of a high rise.

Dame Elish said: "I'd go along with a fish supper. She lived in what was known as the Wine Alley.

"She was completely isolated and kept a gas mask in the event of a fire, which obviously would have been no help to her.

"Her linoleum was dirty and worn. She was blind and it was peeling up from the floor, so at risk of tripping her, but also it wasn't keeping her home adequately warm.

"I applied for extra money so she could get a carpet and was turned down. No carpet allowed, it had to be linoleum, that's how it was, no flexibility.

"So I took it to appeal and on the day of the hearing, of course it was the annual taxi ride to Troon so as soon as I stood up to speak, the horns started blaring and I'm sure no one heard half of what I said.

"We won. But not everyone has an aspiring young lawyer to speak up for them. Otherwise, that woman would have been sitting in the cold until she died."

Dame Elish, who praised Parkhead Housing Association for the work they are doing in Glasgow's east end and support bosses give to Glasgow Women's Aid, said the landscape of Glasgow has changed for the better.

She added: "If you look at the way we built our housing in the past, it was all large buildings.

"Social housing is getting much much better and there is a much more considered approach to it now.

"If you walk around areas in Glasgow that were hitherto bleak now have a sense of cohesion.

"I was impressed by what I have seen at Parkhead Housing Association and it is quite clear the passion the people I have met here have for what they do."

Dame Elish also said social housing providers are getting it right for people with additional needs and mental health difficulties in a way the justice system could learn from.

But she said Glasgow - and Scotland - needs more available housing to support people coming out of prison and from abusive relationships.

She said: "What I knew about Asperger's as a prosecutor I learned from a movie - Rainman.

"People on the autism spectrum don't always have strong social skills or can lack empathy. Judgements are made on how someone appears in court. A lack of understanding can lead to people being misunderstood in the justice system.

"Or, for example, when people think of epilepsy then they think of the grand mal seizure but people suffer a postictal state afterwards.

"You imagine a young man of 19 who has had a seizure and is walking down the street, licking his lips and rubbing his crotch.

"He is going to get arrested and find himself in the justice system if people don't understand his condition.

"We need to have a system that is nimble and subtle enough to deal with these issues."

Dame Elish added: "One young woman who was getting released the next week told me she was not going to a hostel when she came out of prison, she was going to look for a place to sleep under a bridge because that was safer.

"She was sure she would be attacked in a hostel. We need safe and appropriate housing for people in these situations.

"Rehabilitation means people having somewhere secure to go, it's important for a good outcome.

"There is a fundamental human right to safe housing."