Cornton Vale is the primary establishment in Scotland for holding female offenders remanded or sentenced to prison by the courts. In addition to Cornton Vale, female offenders are held in HMP Greenock; there are also current plans to create reintegration units for small numbers of female prisoners in Aberdeen and Inverness prisons to allow them to access local community services as they approach release.

Cornton Vale provides custodial facilities for female prisoners (including young offenders) in all sentence ranges and supervision levels. It has a design capacity of 375 places, with an assessed operational limit of 440 places; these figures include 24 spaces within the independent living units (ILUs) adjacent to the prison grounds for appropriate women nearing the end of their sentence, and seven mother and baby spaces available inside the prison. In total, the prison has six accommodation blocks.

On average there is approximately a total of 378 prisoners were held in Cornton Vale. To ease overcrowding, there are currently 53 Prisoners housed in Greenock Prison's Darroch Hall. We currently have between 32 - 40 prisoners on Home Detention Curfew (HDC). The population in the financial year 2009-10 ranged between 341 and 423, with an average population of 377.

There are 271 substantive staff; this includes 206 uniformed staff, 18 nurses and 39 administrative staff, and 8 middle and senior managers.

Imprisonment can be a difficult time for family.  The attached leaflet may assist Phoenix Futures