Trainee painter and decorator Tamla Templeton was today packing her bags ---- to go to jail for the weekend.

The 24-year-old mother, of West Bank Close, Keighley, has become the first woman in the Bradford district to be sentenced to part-time prison. She will spend the next 11 weekends behind bars in Morton Hall Prison, near Lincoln. The intermittent custody sentence was handed out at Bradford Crown Court on Monday under the Criminal Justice Act.

Templeton had pleaded guilty to an offence of assault following an attack on a woman with a stick last August.

But Judge Stephen Gullick had adjourned her case so she could be assessed for the new type of sentence. He imposed a total of 36 weeks but Templeton, who has a seven-year-old son, will serve 11 weekends.

Each Friday she will take the train from Keighley -- paid for by the authorities -- and stay in prison until the Sunday afternoon.

When not behind bars, she will be subject to licence supervision in the community and she must attend meetings with a probation officer, if told to do so. Bradford is one of a number of court centres around the country which can pass such orders on female offenders. Other centres, such as Manchester and Lancashire, can impose similar orders in the case of men.

They can only be passed on offenders over 21 and are not considered suitable for people who pose a risk of harm to the public.

They are designed to avoid the extra problems that can be caused by short, full-time prison sentences, such as loss of employment and accommodation, together with family difficulties.

After the hearing, Templeton said it meant she could spend the week with her son Wassem.

"It gives me a chance to realise what I would have lost," she said.

"It is better than prison all the time because my son will not know that I'm away because he spends the weekend with his gran anyway."

She had spent a week in prison on remand previously and did not want to go back to jail again.

The case had been adjourned so that the sentence could be explained to her, she added.

Her mother, 42-year-old Christine Holdsworth, of Hill Top Way, Keighley, said her daughter had faced a number of offences.

"This is a relief -- I expected worse. She could have been away from her son and from us," she said.