Juliet Lyon - director Prison Reform Trust

Women’s prisons have become our social dustbins. They are now seen as a stopgap, cut-price provider of drug detox, mental health assessment and treatment— a refuge for those failed by public services. Twelve years ago there were some 1,800 women in jail. Today there are 4,393.  

In the wake of six women’s deaths at Styal prison, the government asked Baroness Jean Corston in 2005 to undertake ‘a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system’. Her recommendations are published today. The extent of those “particular vulnerabilities” are laid out starkly in the report: more than half of women prisoners have suffered violence at home. One in three have experienced sexual abuse. A quarter have been in local authority care. Two-thirds have a neurotic disorder, such as depression or anxiety. Women prisoners have a much high rate of severe mental illness such as schizophrenia: 14% compared to less than 1% in the general population. Over a third of women who are imprisoned will already have attempted suicide.

One woman I met in prison had set fire to herself in a town car park. A nearby tree caught alight and she had been charged with criminal damage. We are locking up our most damaged and vulnerable women in bleak, under-staffed institutions, from which, despite the best efforts of many people, they are almost bound to emerge more damaged, more vulnerable. Imprisonment will cause a third of women prisoners to lose their homes, reduce future chances of employment and shatter family ties. Home Office figures reveal that more than half those released will be re-offend within two years.  

Distressingly, governors and staff told Jean Corston, many do not need to be there in the first place. More women are sent to prison for shoplifting than any other crime. About 40% serve three months or less. Two thirds of women enter prison on remand. When their cases are considered one in five are acquitted altogether and over half go on to serve a community penalty.

An alternative model exists already. Across the UK there are a handful of support and supervision centres designed to respond effectively to women offenders in the community. Unlike prison, which tends to diminish responsibility and increase dependence, they succeed in enabling vulnerable women to take responsibility for their lives. Based on the visits to centres in Glasgow, Halifax and Worcester, public seminars, meetings with coroners and sentencers, and reams of of research evidence, Jean Corston concluded that there first needs to be “a strong, consistent message from the top of government … that prison is not the right place for women offenders who pose no risk to the public”.

This government has thus far failed to match its rhetoric with action, however. The Treasury Spending Review in 2004 earmarked funds to ‘pilot radical new approaches to meet the specific needs of women offenders, to tackle the causes of crime and re-offending among this group and reduce the need for custody’. It has taken the Home Office three years even to begin spending this money. A piecemeal response to Corston would risk another care in the community fiasco.

The Corston review gives government the chance at long last to join up its social policy with its criminal justice policy. Most women in prison have committed petty offences. Very many have been victims of serious crime and sustained abuse. A new commission for women, with a sensible blueprint for reform across government departments, could replace the outdated, discredited  model of large prisons with a network of small units and effective local services coupled with proper supervision and support. Women who have offended will have their first real opportunity to beat drugs, drink, mental illness and crime and to take responsibility for their lives, and the lives of their children. Most will take it.

This article appears in the Guardian 14 March 2007