STOP IMPRISONING
 MENTALLY ILL WOMEN

The Prison Reform Trust today calls for the Government to take urgent action to stop women with mental health problems being sent to prison.  PRT draws attention to the fact that 40 per cent of women in prison have received help or treatment for a mental health problem in the year before imprisonment.  And one in five will have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital at some time in their lives.  For many women, the journey from patient to prisoner is an indictment of a range of public services which have failed to meet their needs.

“During the two and half years of my incarceration I was to discover the depths of despair one can fall into, believing I was losing my mind, believing I was dead, believing I was buried alive, believing I would never be free.  I learnt about self- harm, physically and emotionally, I learnt how to survive, yet at the same time how it feels to want to die every day….. Prison is not a place for the mentally ill, and too many women are there already that should not be”. 

(Women ex-prisoner)

“Locking up women who are mentally ill is a crime in itself. These women need a range of community mental health services including psychiatric support and drug treatment and, in some cases, in-patient or secure care. They need help and someone to talk to. They do not need to be locked up for hours on end in an overcrowded prison with their medication administered through a metal flap in their cell door”.

Juliet Lyon, Director, Prison Reform Trust.

• Two-thirds of women in prison have a neurotic disorder, such as depression, anxiety and phobias.  Among the general household population less than a fifth of women suffer from these disorders. 

• Women prisoners have a high rate of severe mental illness such as schizophrenia or delusional disorders; 14 per cent compared to less than 1 per cent in the general population. 

• Half of the women in prison are on prescribed medication such as anti-depressants or anti-psychotic medicine. 

• The Home Office acknowledges in ‘Statistics on Women in the Criminal Justice System’ that although the Prison Service aims to ensure that prisoners get health care standards equivalent to the NHS, this is not being achieved and that “in some places the gulf in standards is very wide”.

• There has been a 23 per cent increase in the number of women in prison in the last year alone.  The number of women held on remand increased by 30 per cent in the same period.  On the 22nd February 2002, there were 4195 women held in prison in England and Wales, the highest ever number of women in prison.

• Women are held an average of 63 miles away from home, which makes contact with their families difficult.  This can impact on successful resettlement, and mental wellbeing, as links with community support are limited. 

• One in four women in prison has spent time in local authority care as a child.  Nearly 40 per cent of women in prison leave school before the age of 16 years, almost one in ten were aged 13 or younger.

• Over half of women in prison report that they have suffered violence at home and one in three have experienced sexual abuse. 

Notes to editors:

The Prison Reform Trust is holding a major national conference Troubled Inside: Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Women in Prison today, 6th March 2002, at the Royal Society of Arts, 8 John Adam Street, London, WC2N 6EZ.  It will be attended by over 100 delegates.  Speakers include the Prisons Minister, Beverley Hughes MP and Nicola Singleton, co-author of Psychiatric Morbidity among Women Prisoners.