The early days of the brand new Labour authorities have given jail reform advocates cause to be hopeful. Two bulletins – the appointment of James Timpson as prisons minister and an expanded early launch programme – are promising steps in the direction of repairing a felony justice system that has been devastated by cuts and neglect.
Jail overcrowding is essentially the most urgent subject, with the present inhabitants standing at greater than 87,000. This considerably exceeds the Ministry of Justice’s “protected and first rate” capability of 79,695 inmates. England and Wales have one of many highest charges of imprisonment in western Europe, nearly twice as excessive as Germany.
Roughly 4% of individuals in jail in England and Wales are girls, and in 2020 72% of feminine jail admissions had been for non-violent crimes. As somebody who research girls’s prisons, I hope that plans for change will embody revising how we punish and rehabilitate girls.
Timpson has mentioned that prisons, particularly for ladies, are a “catastrophe”. He has famous accurately that prisons typically lead girls again into the cycle of offending. Ladies launched from jail reoffend extra often and extra rapidly than those that serve group sentences.
Ladies often expertise a “revolving door” of quick jail sentences – too quick to have interaction in significant schooling, coaching or work alternatives. In 2017, 77% of custodial sentences for ladies had been 12 months or much less, with a 71% reoffending fee following such quick sentences.
Incarcerated girls face complicated and extreme challenges. They’re disproportionately affected by self-harm, accounting for 29% of all incidents (regardless of making up much less that 5% of the jail inhabitants). Many are moms and first caregivers, impacting an estimated 17,000 kids yearly.
Violence in girls’s prisons is one other severe concern, with 469 incidents per 1,000 prisoners within the 12 months to June 2023. The assault fee is greater than three and a half occasions larger than a decade in the past, and considerably exceeds that in males’s prisons. This improve in violence is usually linked to psychological well being points and substance abuse, exacerbated by overcrowding.
Greater than half of incarcerated girls have skilled extreme trauma, together with home violence and childhood abuse. Ladies within the justice system want tailor-made assist techniques that supply trauma-informed care, psychological well being companies and community-based assist.
Hope Avenue in Southampton exhibits a substitute for jail
The 2007 Corston report was commissioned in response to the deaths of six girls at HMP Styal between August 2002 and August 2003. It provided 43 suggestions for enhancing the remedy of susceptible girls within the felony justice system. On the time, the federal government accepted 41 of those suggestions, together with limiting imprisonment to severe offences and enhancing well being and assist companies.
In 2013, the Home of Commons justice committee reviewed the progress for the reason that Corston report, and located not a lot progress had been made. The report criticised prisons for treating girls like kids, and contrasted this to girls’s centres, which it argued empower girls to take management of their lives.
There are round 40 girls’s centres in England and Wales, however there was a scarcity of funding and political dedication to open extra.
Gender-specific programmes and assist are vital to addressing the circumstances and desires of feminine offenders, together with victimisation, trauma, psychological and bodily well being, being pregnant and parenting.
Different approaches – what works for ladies?
Jail typically creates extra issues than it solves, particularly for ladies with complicated points, which quick sentences fail to deal with. Reasonably than constructing extra prisons, investing in complete group assist comparable to girls’s centres may very well be an efficient different.
Learn extra:
The UK’s prisons aren’t simply overcrowded – they must be higher designed
Timpson has advocated for community-based options to imprisonment. One instance is Hope Avenue in Southampton, a residential group the place girls dwell with their kids.
Hope Avenue provides a group different for ladies on group orders, remand, or post-release. A number of evaluations and analysis research have documented the optimistic outcomes for ladies who interact with girls’s centres, together with reducing reoffending).
The programme will probably be evaluated over the subsequent few years. If profitable, the same mannequin may very well be applied nationwide, decreasing the variety of girls who find yourself in jail.
Scotland’s Bella Centre additionally represents a extra progressive strategy, specializing in community-based custody. This 16-space unit, free from jail bars, helps girls reintegrate into society by group contact and entry to native companies. It’s a part of a £600 million plan to enhance Scotland’s custodial property.
The federal government’s deal with addressing the prisons disaster presents a promising alternative to discover extra of those progressive, community-based options to jail, and create significant change for feminine offenders.
