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Mr MacAskill was speaking as work began on the site of the new prison at Bishopbriggs. When completed in early 2012, the new publicly funded prison will have the capacity to hold 700 prisoners.
Mr MacAskill said: "For many years Scotland's prisons were allowed to crumble and decay. The start of work here at Low Moss is further evidence that a corner has truly been turned.
"One of the first decisions I took as Justice Secretary was to announce that the prison being built on this site would be a public prison - Scotland's first entirely new public prison in many, many years.
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"We are investing around £100 million in the building of this new prison. This is an investment not just in our criminal justice system but an investment in jobs for the construction industry - vital in the current economic climate.
"We are investing £120 million a year in developing a prison estate fit for the 21st century. But what we will not do is build even more prisons simply to fill them with people whose offending could be dealt with more effectively in the community."
Mr MacAskill said a successful offender management approach requires is a combination of modern prisons for the most serious offenders and tough community payback programmes for less serious offenders.
"We need tough and secure prisons for those who need to be detained, but we do not need people getting free bed and board at the taxpayers expense when they should be paying back by hard work in the community. That represents our best chance of breaking the cycle of reoffending and delivering a safer, stronger Scotland."
(GK/BMcC)
