"IT'S QUITE clear to me a lot of the offenders and those on remand should not be in prison." Hardly the words you would expect from an experienced prison governor of Scotland's only women's prison.

It has taken Ian Gunn, governor of Cornton Vale Prison and Young Offenders Institution, just 18 months to come to this conclusion. He said he feels as though the focus of his work draws parallels with how a national mental health institution would operate.

"It's a respite regime for those who find it difficult to cope with life," Gunn said.

The shift in rhetoric from those at the top of Scotland's punitive justice system comes as little surprise. For years we have seen the prison population and re-offending rates soar. Last month Cornton Vale broke an uneasy record when its own population reached 415. In 1998 the total female prison population was just 186.

Last week the long-awaited Scottish Prisons Commission report, headed by former Labour first minister Henry McLeish, concluded: "High prison populations do not reduce crime. They are more likely to create pressures that drive re-offending than to reduce it."

In his report Scotland's Choices, McLeish criticises the widespread use of custodial sentences, saying prisons are increasingly being used for those who are "troubled and troubling rather than dangerous".

He wants to reduce the inmate numbers by between 3000 and 4000 over the next decade by the use of non-custodial sentences such as community service orders. If our courts were to carry on as they are, McLeish warns Scotland's prison population, already at 8000, would reach 8700 by 2016.

"We cannot go on as we are because if we do, our prisons are going to burst at the seams," said Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary.

The solutions, outlined in McLeish's 23 recommendations, are radical. He wants the government to bring forward legislation that would require judges, when dealing with less serious crimes that carry a sentence of six months' imprisonment or less, to impose community supervision sentences instead.

The impact of such legislation would be felt most by the women of Cornton Vale who are incarcerated for offences such as shoplifting, non-payment of fines for prostitution offences or breaches of the peace.

Walking through Cornton Vale estate Gunn stops a young woman who is pushing a pram while holding her young daughter on her hip. Gunn says hello to the baby, who looks about 18 months old. The little girl smiles and waves as her mum walks back to her cell block. "It's a bit surreal, I know," says Gunn, who steps aside to let two expectant mothers pass.

Gunn points and describes the collections of grey buildings across the estate. Skye House used to be for young offenders until one YO (young offender) decided to burn it down.

They have a chapel and family centre, flats for those women about to be released, and a mother and baby wing.

"They can work too," said Gunn. "We just had a nice letter from SDEA (Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency) who said thank you to the girls who made up the Choose Life information packs."

Prison rules dictate that convicted and remanded prisoners cannot mix, and neither can adult and young offenders. At Bruce House, 27 convicted YOs are kept downstairs from the remanded adult prisoners upstairs. Across in Younger House, 20 remand YOs are kept separate from adult prisoners - the "cons" as they are known.

In a small recreational room on the YO wing of Bruce House, six girls dressed in grey polo shirts and black tracksuit bottoms sit nervously giggling like schoolgirls awaiting our arrival.

Ashleigh, at 16 the youngest of the group, was sentenced to 11 months for multiple offences including breach of the peace and assault. If McLeish's recommendations were adopted, she would not be here. He wants 16 and 17-year-olds to be kept in secure units instead of adult prisons. There are so few places for young women in Scotland, Gunn revealed, that Cornton Vale had a 15-year-old girl held for four weeks before she was sent to a secure unit in England, despite her family coming from the north of Scotland.

Ashleigh said her four months in Cornton Vale have been easy, but claimed a community sentence would have been harder to complete. "It's more of a challenge. Prison is easy in a way for some folk as they have more stuff in here than they do outside. Most folk don't have a telly that big at home," she says, pointing to a flat-screen television hanging on the wall. "Outside you've got temptations like drugs, people getting you into trouble, so in that way it is harder."

Meghann, 20, has served two months of an eight-month sentence for breaching bail, community service, a supervision order and a probation order. Arms folded in front of her chest, she shrugs when asked why she flouted all the non-custodial sentences given to her.

The room bursts into laughter when Michelle, 19, describes her sentence for breaching community service - 30 days. For them it's a joke because she will only serve 15 days. Seemingly embarrassed by the other girls' ridicule, Michelle retaliates by saying she's back in court at the end of the month for assault. The room quietens.

Her reasons for breaching community service are complex as she was living in a homeless unit and her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. "My community sentence was picking up rubbish, cleaning parks and sitting in a van. I didn't get a second chance and I had a lot going on. I don't think he the sheriff took the social background report seriously. If he had, and given me a second chance, it would have been a lot better."

The most vocally remorseful of all the girls is Jodie, 20. She was high on Valium and desperate for more drugs, which led her to break into a neighbour's house. It was the first time she had been handed a custodial sentence; she was given 12 months.

"I felt awful that I'd broken into this woman's house," she said. "I heard her whispering to neighbours and talking about me and I genuinely felt bad about what I did. I said I am really sorry, but she went mental and told me to get lost before she killed me.

"My conscience was hurt, everyone in my community knows what I did and I have to walk back out there. I am not a bad person, I wasn't a f****d-up person either; I was just desperate and I felt like I had no other choice."

Jodie has spent a month on remand and a month in Bruce House and in that time has detoxed. Her attempts at making amends may have failed, but she believes that if the judge had given her a chance to take part in a restorative justice programme, which would have allowed her victim to confront her, she would have done so.

Nikki, 18, and Ellie, 20, are the only mothers in the group. They have found imprisonment hugely disruptive to their children's lives.

"I won't let my kids visit me here because it can get frightening," Ellie said. "If someone is found with drugs, the officers pile in and that's not something my children should see."

Ellie and Nikki believe community-based sentences would have helped them keep their family and home life stable. Ask the girls what should be done to stop young women ending up in Cornton Vale or re-offending and they all say the same thing: tackle drug and alcohol problems. All the women we spoke to had committed crimes while under the influence.

Ellie criticised DTTOs (drug treatment and testing orders) for their lack of counselling and reliance on the methadone programme.

"They're fine at dealing with your drug problem but they need to look at why people are drinking and taking drugs all the time. If they don't, then nothing is going to change."

The short, sharp, shock of handing down a small custodial sentence isn't working. For these girls it serves only to confirm their own feelings about themselves and prevents prison staff from helping tackle their addictions or emotional problems. Gunn is in agreement with McLeish. Like the former first minister, he believes Scotland needs to create a new modern criminal justice system by providing more non-custodial opportunities, but he also realises the changes will challenge public attitudes.

"I suspect that if you are a victim of crime, you don't want to think about what's best for them - you want prison to be a punishment. Short-term offences are when you might get a six-month sentence; you serve three months in custody and then you're out early on home curfew.

"It doesn't give us enough time. You can't do much of an assessment of their needs. Some women go out into a worse situation: they've lost their home, their job, a relationship with family or children. When they go out they're even more desperate for money."

Cornton Vale has an annual budget of nearly £12 million. Gunn said he would like to see the prison population cut in half to 200, which would free up money to be diverted to community service projects.

"I do believe some of the women would be less likely to re-offend if they could stay in the community," he said. "Prison is an opportunity for people to be idle for a few hours a day. I believe now we have found a will to do something different, but the difficult part is convincing the public."

Some names have been changed