Cornton Vale closed in April 2023 with inmates being accommodated in other establishments across the female estate prior to moving into the new HMP & YOI Stirling.

Opened in 1907, the colony provided a home and training in market gardening for habitual inebriates and others – all male – sent by the Church or by their families.

From 1926 to 1931, it received public funds under the Empire Settlement Act 1922, and most of the trainees were helped to emigrate to the Dominions.

It continued to train unemployed young men until the Second World War, but was sold off subsequently and re-opened as a male Borstal in 1946.

The layout was unconventional with a series of bungalows forming the basic concept, each with one warden and seven prisoners in individual rooms.

Four of these blocks (or houses) have 178 places and are sub-divided into six or seven-room units each with its own dining/sitting room, and almost all have a common kitchen or servery.

It also holds children, in particular the babies of inmates who are imprisoned alongside their mothers and teenagers where there is no suitable accommodation available in young offenders institutions.

The new prison, built on the former site of St Columba's High School on Inverkip Road,[10] would have 300 places and would cost £75 million to construct.

[7] Responding to a 2016 inspector's report, which found unsanitary conditions at Cornton Vale, the Scottish Prison Service said pressures on Corton Vale would ease with the beginning of its rundown in the summer of 2016 (when some prisoners would move to HMP Polmont) but that full closure would not happen until 2020.