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April 2013 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 9
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Cover story |
Women’s justice
much more to be learned about how women can be better supported to access treatment.
The Kaleidoscope Project’s conference in Cardiff last month (see page 10) provided a welcome
opportunity to examine how better use can be made of community solutions. There is room for
optimism in Wales, and the opportunity to lead the way in delivering effective community services
for women, with Wales Probation and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Cymru
working together to tackle women’s offending. The Integrated Offender Management (IOM) Cymru
board has endorsed the development of a women offender pathfinder to manage women offenders
under a coordinated ‘whole system’ approach from first contact with the police onwards, and the
National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has committed to reducing the number of Welsh
women in prison by increasing the community sentencing options and prevention activities.
The Ministry of Justice is undertaking a review of the women’s prison estate which hopefully will
lead to a reduction in women’s prison places and the eventual development of a network of smaller,
local units for the minority of women offenders for whom prison is the only option. The department
has to reduce its resource budget by 23 per cent by 2014/15, which should provide a powerful
incentive to make prison a genuine last resort and focus investment on community solutions.
This means ensuring appropriate, gender-specific provision is made in every area across the
country to allow women to be supported and supervised in the community to address the underlying
causes of their offending behaviour, and we are calling on the government to make it a statutory
requirement under the Crime and Courts Bill for this provision to be made available nationwide.
Radical steps to reform women’s justice are also being taken in Scotland following the
Commission on Women Offenders, and Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice has set out an
ambitious programme aimed at addressing women’s offending in the community where possible.
And the Ministry of Justice’s strategic objectives, published last month, show encouraging signs
that justice ministers in Westminster share this determination to reform women’s justice and do
what works.
DDN
Katy Swaine Williams is head of outreach at the Prison Reform Trust, José Aguiar is an
educational consultant. With input from Jenny Earle, Reforming Women’s Justice programme
director, Prison Reform Trust
www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk
FACTS
– women, drugs and prison
• Between 2000 and 2010 the women’s prison population increased by 26 per cent. A
total of 10,181 women were received into prison in 2011
• Forty-five per cent of women leaving prison reoffend within one year
• An estimated 17,240 children are separated from their mother each year by prison
and about two babies are born each week to women prisoners in England
• Most women entering prison under sentence in England (81 per cent) have committed
non-violent offences. Among the most common are theft and handling stolen goods
• Over half the women in prison report having suffered domestic violence and one
in three has experienced sexual abuse
• Thirty-one per cent of women interviewed for the
Surveying prisoner crime
reduction
study reported having spent time in local authority care, compared to
24 per cent of men in prison and fewer than 1 per cent of all children in the
general population
• 30 per cent of women in custody have had a psychiatric admission before entering prison
• Women account for 31 per cent of self-harm incidents in prison despite
representing only 5 per cent of the prison population
Neglect and abuse in
childhood is a common
characteristic in the personal
histories of many female drug
users, writes
José Aguiar
PARENTAL NEGLECT
, as well as the trauma of physical or
sexual abuse, are recurring themes that make women
vulnerable to developing drug problems and which, in the
absence of adequate support, can contribute to a downward
spiral. I have been working with women in prison for the last
seven years, and many shared common characteristics:
• Most were mothers. Some had their children with them
immediately prior to custody, others had handed them to
relatives or their children had been taken into care or adopted
• They were drug users, or alcoholics, and prostitution and
shoplifting were ways to pay for drugs
• A great number had been sexually, emotionally and
physically abused
• They self-harmed and had mental health problems
• They were poor.
When I spoke with Kay*, a young woman in a female prison
in London, the first thing that struck me was when she said,
‘I became a woman in prison’. Kay is 21 and has been in
prison since she was 15. She comes from a very
dysfunctional family in Wales, with a history of violence and
alcohol abuse at home.
‘I couldn’t cope with it,’ she says. ‘My family was my
crowd on the streets. It was the only place I felt some
affection. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know where to
find help. When I was 13 years old, I felt that I hadn’t had
any support, I hated to be alone and I stabbed knives in the
walls, drank a lot. I couldn’t socialise without being high. I
ended up doing shoplifting, and get into fights all the time.
People saw me as a violent person. I’m not. I just didn’t
know better. I stabbed a person, because I was attacked, but
“they” don’t want to know...’
Kay is serving an indeterminate sentence for public
protection (IPP), and is waiting for her parole board hearing.
‘It’s been adjourned so many times. I don’t knowwhat to
do. Probation wants to put me in a hostel miles away frommy
home town. Hostels are terrible. They don’t make me feel
safe. I keep thinking, what’s the point of sending me to
prison? I lost my teenage years in here. If I had the right
support when I was a child, it would have been a very
different story.
Prison doesn’t have the facilities to provide the support I
needed. I had to struggle in prison against drug addiction.
There are a lot of drugs in prison. I really need to be strong to
resist the temptation.
I’mwaiting to be released, I’m trying to do my best to
prepare for my life outside, but I don’t know what’s going to
happen. I have been here for so long. What was the point of
putting me in prison?’
*Not her real name