 A 2012 review into women's prisons in Scotland, conducted by former Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini described Cornton Vale as "a miserable place" and that conditions for prisoners were "antediluvian and appalling".In 2019 women were found “who clearly were in need of urgent care and treatment in a psychiatric facility, and [who] should not have been in a prison environment”.Among them was one woman who bit through the skin and muscle of her arm down to the bone and another who set her hair on fire.