Women in Prison in England and Wales *

United Nations A/CONF.203/17/NGO/4

Distr.: General Eleventh 7 March 2005

United Nations Congress Original: English on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

Bangkok, 18–25 April 2005

Agenda item 7: Making standards work: fifty years of standard-setting in crime prevention and criminal justice.

Women in prison in England and Wales* prepared by the Howard League for Penal Reform (non-governmental or- ganizations in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council).**

* Distribution is limited to the quantities and languages in which the paper is made available to the United Nations ** The designations employed, the presentation of the material and the views expressed in this paper are those of the submitting organization and do not necessarily reflect the practices and views of the Secretariat of the United Nations in any of these respects. A/CONF.203/4

Women in prison in England and Wales

The Howard League for Penal Reform is the leading non-governmental organisation dealing with penal reform in the UK and was awarded Consultative Status with the United Nations in 1947.

The Howard League for Penal Reform works for a safe society where fewer people are victims of crime

The Howard League for Penal Reform believes that offenders must make amends for what they done and change their lives

The Howard League for Penal Reform believes that community sentences make a person take responsibility and live a law-abiding life in the community

The Howard League for Penal Reform is seriously concerned at the increasing numbers of women being sent to prison under sentence and on remand in England and Wales. There is evidence that this increase is being replicated across many other countries. The charity argues that very few women have committed such serious and violent offences and represent such a danger to the community that they require custody. For all other women community based interventions are preferable for reasons of humanity, economy and efficacy.

Since its foundation nearly 140 years ago the charity has conducted research on women in the penal system and has provided direct services to women in prison. The Howard League for Penal Reform is submitting this paper to the United Nations Eleventh Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice being held in Bangkok in April 2005 and will be hosting an ancillary session to discuss its concern that there are too many women in prison worldwide.

1 The numbers of women in prison The number of women in prison in England and Wales has been rising steadily since 1993 when it stood at 1,580. At 4 March 2005 there were 4,394 women in 18 prisons representing about 6% of the total prison population in England and Wales.

The number of women experiencing prison each year has also increased. 13,380 women were received into prison during 2002, an increase of almost 3,000 since 1999 or one-third in three years.

The number of women sent to prison on remand has increased from 6,721 in 1999 to 8,690 during 2002, a rise of about a third in three years.

About half of the women sentenced to prison are convicted of theft, handling, fraud or forgery and only 10% of adult women sentenced to prison are convicted of offences involving violence.

2 Government policies

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The British government acknowledged that there was a problem when in March 2004 it published the Women’s Offending Reduction Programme Action Plan. The Minister, Paul Goggins MP said:

“The courts have been using custody more frequently for women over the last few years, even though the nature and seriousness of their offending has not, on the whole, been getting worse…The evidence suggests that courts are imposing more severe sentences on women for less serious offences.”

The five priority areas for action comprised:

 Making community interventions more appropriate for women  Meeting mental health needs  Dealing with substance misuse  Building up the evidence base  Training, guidance and communication

Nevertheless, politics intervene and Ministers and opposition politicians constantly talk tough about offenders that adds to the pressure on courts to sentence to custody more readily and for longer periods. The Howard League for Penal Reform contends that women offenders have become the victims of this vitriolic and emotive rhetoric.

3 Life inside

 Carers More than half of all women in prison have a child under 16 and over one-third have a child under five. Women in prison are therefore likely to have been primary carers before imprisonment, providing the main source of care and support for children or other family members. The most recent research into the women’s prison population found that 61% were either pregnant or mothers of children under 18. The 1,035 mothers questioned had in total 2,168 children. 71% of the children had been living with their mother just before her imprisonment. Of these, for 85%, the mother's imprisonment was the first separation of any significant length. Substitute carers identified by the researchers were mostly grandparents and female relatives (41%) with 8% going into care. Six prisons hold babies alongside their mothers, mostly up to the age of eighteen months providing about 90 places. This means that some 650 babies under the age of two are separated from an imprisoned mother at any one time.

 Medical Women tend to place a greater demand on medical services than men. Approximately 20% of women prisoners ask to see a doctor or nurse each day, almost twice as many as male prisoners. Over 66% of women in prison were assessed as having neurotic disorders such as depression, anxiety and phobias. The comparable figure in the community is less than 20%.

 Punishment Women are punished for misdemeanours inside prison in far greater numbers than men. Women are punished at a rate of 213 per 100 of the population compared to 161 for men. This comprises punishments for disobedience or disrespect, unauthorised transactions and violence. Behaviour that is tolerated by men is punished in women. The higher punishment level may contribute to the higher incidence of self-injury because women are given no avenue for venting frustration and misery other than self-injury.

Physical restraint is sometimes used on women prisoners and twenty-six percent of these restraints took place on medical grounds. This included the use of loose canvas jacket, protective rooms and special cells. On two occasions in 2002 a body belt was used on a woman.

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 Suicides and self-injury Fourteen women committed suicide in prisons in 2003 and 13 died by their own hand in 2004. This takes the total number of self-inflicted deaths from 1994 to 2004 to 63 women and girls.

Women account for over 25% of deliberate self-injury incidents in prisons, but are only 6% of the prison population. Prisons with transient populations, overcrowded, with limited regimes and few opportunities for staff to form relationships with women have the highest incident rate. Research carried out by the Howard League for Penal Reform amongst women self-harmers in prison shows that the most important factors included the lack of autonomy and power alongside boredom and the lack of creative activities. Women told the researcher that prison staff never asked them what they wanted.

Chloe was 17 years old and serving her first prison sentence for theft. She had been in prison for one week when she cut herself. She described how other girls were bullying her by picking on her and hitting her. Chloe felt helpless and unable to cope. She felt that self-injuring was the only way she could seek help. She spoke to staff about the bullying but it only seemed to make things worse.

 Minorities In 2003, 31% of women in custody were from minority ethnic groups compared to 24% of men. Some 20% of the women in prison are foreign nationals compared to 11% in the male estate. The high number of foreign national women is partly accounted for by the extremely high sentences given to drug couriers and they therefore tend to form a disproportionately high percentage of the daily female population.

 Lifers There were 165 women serving a life sentence in prison in 2002 compared to 4,982 men. About 70% of the women are serving a mandatory life sentence for murder with the second highest category serving a discretionary life sentence for arson. Tariffs usually range from 5 to 15 years although it is possible to be awarded a whole life tariff.

Women lifers are treated the same as the men with little recognition of the differences in female responses to incarceration or their different needs. Women prisoners wear their own clothes but as women serving very long sentences can lose their outside networks they have to rely on charity for essentials like underwear.

 Life is different for women in prison There are relatively few women’s prisons and so women tend to be held long distances from home. Women’s prisons are guided by the same rules as for men that take no account of the special needs of women. There is no separate management system for women’s prisons and regional managers do not have to have any specialist training or expertise in working with women.

4 Recommendations The Howard League for Penal Reform recommends that prison custody for women should be virtually abolished so that only those women who are convicted of serious and violent offences and who represent a continuing danger to the public should be held in custody. For all other women offenders community based interventions that make amends for the wrong done and encourage women to change their lives offer the best chance of creating a safer society. Women should be asked to take responsibility for the wrong they have done and live a law-abiding life.

Any form of custody must recognise and respect the particular needs of women.

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Community interventions should be improved so that they provide a safe and appropriate route for women offenders and meet the needs of victims.

Research reports on women published by the Howard League for Penal Reform

 Advice, understanding and underwear: working with girls in prison (2004)  Suicide and self-harm prevention: repetitive self-harm among women and girls and prison (2001)  A chance to break the cycle: women and the drug testing and treatment order (2000)  Life in the Shadows: women lifers (1999)  Desperate measures – prison suicides and their prevention (1999)  In the best interests of babies? (1999)  Do women paint fences too? Women’s experience of community service (1999)  Lost inside – the use of imprisonment for teenage girls (1997)