why women.qxp_Layout 1 03/02/2017 15:43 Page 1 Why focus on reducing women’s imprisonment? Prison Reform Trust briefing February 2017 Key points • The women’s prison population in England and Wales more than doubled between 1995 and 2010 - from under 2,000 women to over 4,000. The numbers have since declined by over 10% – from 4,279 women in April 2012 to 3,821 in April 2016. But the UK still has one of the highest rates of women’s imprisonment in Western Europe. • Women are a small minority of those in the criminal justice system, representing less than 5% of the prison population, and are easily overlooked in policy, planning, and services - they have been described as 'correctional afterthoughts'. • The drivers and patterns of women’s offending are generally different from men’s. • Most of the solutions to women’s offending lie in improved access to community based support services, including women’s centres. These enable women to address underlying problems which may lead to offending but which the criminal justice system cannot solve. • The impact of imprisonment on women, more than half of whom have themselves been victims of serious crime, is especially damaging and their outcomes are worse than men’s. • Most women have neither a home nor a job to go to on release. • Women are much more likely to be primary carers, with children far more directly affected by a prison sentence as a result. The real battle started when I got out. Everything - home, re-establishing relationships, job. Imprisonment just exploded a bomb into every aspect of my life... A mother with experience of prison. The Prison Reform Trust has long called for a reduction in women’s imprisonment and a step change in how the criminal justice system responds to women. March 2017 marks ten years since the Corston Report on Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System, and five years since the Angiolini Commission on Women Offenders (Scotland). These and many other inquiries and reports have all concluded that prison is ra rely a necessar y, app ropriate or proportionate response to women who get caught up in the criminal justice system. 1 The government’s White Paper on Prison Safety and Reform (November 2016) recognises “that many female offenders are often vulnerable members of society. There is evidence that a specific approach is most effective in helping women to…turn their lives around.” It commits to publishing a strategy to “reduce the number of women offending and ending up in custody, including through early and targeted interventions.” 2 This briefing presents key facts and evidence about women’s experience of criminal justice, makes the case for a distinct and gendered approach, and highlights opportunities for accelerating progress. why women.qxp_Layout 1 03/02/2017 15:43 Page 2 A note on the num bers Prison statistics can be confusing. The re is a di ffe rence between a ‘snapshot’ of the prison population at any one time and the total intake (receptions) of individuals into prison over the course of a yea r. In England and Wales, the re a re now around 3,900 women in prison at any one time, 3 but around 9,000 women a year a re received into prison for the first time, either on remand or under sentence. 4 The former ‘snapshot’ figu re will have a higher proportion of those on longer sentences, while the latter annual receptions figure includes all those who have been sent to prison even for very short periods. Most of the information here is for England and Wales, as criminal justice is devolved in Scotland and Northe rn Ireland, but sometimes UK wide data is included. What are the significant di ffe rences between women and men in pri son ? Offending profile • 8,562 women were sent to prison in the year to June 2016, either on remand or to serve a sentence. 84% of sentenced women entering prison had committed a non-violent offence (compared to 76% of men). 5 • More women are sent to prison to serve a sentence for theft than for violence against the person, robbery, sexual offences, fraud, drugs, and motoring offences combined. 6 • In 2015, 80% of female theft offences were for shoplifting. 7 However, encouragingly, the number of women in prison serving a sentence for theft and handling offences decreased by 9% in the 12 months to June 2016. 8 • Women’s offending is more likely than men’s to be prompted by their relationships. Nearly half of women in prison (48%) questioned for the Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SPCR) survey reported having committed offences to support someone else’s drug use compared to 22% of men. 9 • A Cabinet Office study found that 28% of women’s crimes were financially motivated compared to 20% of men’s. 10 Earlier research on mothers in custody found that 38% attributed their offending to ‘a need to support their children’, single mothers being more likely to cite a lack of money as the cause of their offending than those who were married. 11 • Women are mo re likely than men to be in prison under sentence for a fir st offence. Sentenced women (22%) we re nearly twice as likely as men (12%) to have no p revious convictions or cautions. 12 • It is important to note that while many women appear in Court following arrest and charge a great many more women are prosecuted for non-criminal offences. This includes TV licence evasion, welfare fraud, fare evasion and sanctions relating to the non-attendance of children at school. Because these cases are not dealt with by the police there is no option to use an out of court disposal. • TV licence evasion accounted for 36% of all prosecutions for women, but only 6% for men. In 2015, 70% of all the 189,349 defendants prosecuted for this offence were women. 13 2 why women.qxp_Layout 1 03/02/2017 15:43 Page 3 Women received into prison • Women in prison are more likely than men to be on remand (i.e. not convicted of an offence and therefore presumed innocent) - 45% of women entering prison in 2015 did so on remand. 14 Less than half of women remanded and subsequently found guilty are given a prison sentence (71% of those remanded in the magistrates’ courts and 41% of those remanded by the Crown Courts did not receive a custodial sentence). 15 • Women are much more likely than men to be serving short sentences. In the year to June 2016, 63% of sentenced women entering prison were serving six months or less compared to 47% of men. 16 In 1993 only a third of women were given these very short sentences. • The number of women entering prison on short sentences (6 months or less) rose by 6% last year, whilst the number of women sentenced to between 6 and 12 months decreased by 16% between the first quarter of 2015 and the same period in 2016. 17 Abuse and trauma • Women in prison have often been victims of much more serious offences than the ones they are accused of committing. More than half (53%) report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child compared to 27% of men. 18 57% of women report having been victims of domestic violence. 19 Because many women fear disclosing abuse, both figures are likely to be an underestimate. 20 • Women can become trapped in a vicious cycle of victimisation and criminal activity. Their situation is often worsened by poverty, substance dependency or poor mental health. 21 Leaving an abusive relationship can be risky - the period when a woman is planning or making her exit is often the most dangerous for her and her children. 22 • 31% of women in prison spent time in care as children compared with 24% of men .23 3 why women.qxp_Layout 1 03/02/2017 15:43 Page 4 • Women (49%) are more likely than men (29%) to report needing help with a drug problem on entry to prison. 24 Women prisoners are also more likely than men to associate drug use with their offending. • Women are nearly twice as likely as men in prison to be identified as suffering from depression (65% compared to 37%), and more than three times as likely as women in the general population (19%). 25 Almost a third (30%) of women in custody had a psychiatric admission prior to entering prison. 26 46% of women prisoners report having attempted suicide at some point in their lives. This is twice the rate of male prisoners (21%) and more than seven times higher than the general population (6%). 27 • Alcohol is a significant factor in women’s offending. 59% of women prisoners who drank alcohol to excess four weeks before custody felt they had a problem with alcohol, 52% thought their drinking was out of control and 41% wished they could stop. 28 Race and ethnicity • 11% of women in prison are foreign nationals. 29 Some are known to have been coerced or trafficked into offending. 30 • In England and Wales, 19% of the women’s prison population are black or minority ethnic compared to 14% of the general women’s population. 31 Black British women make up 10% of the women’s prison population – three times higher than the 3% they comprise of the general women’s population. 32 • Analysis conducted for the Lammy Review of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation in the Criminal Justice System (2016) found that black women were twice as likely as white women to receive a custodial sentence in the Crown Court for drugs offences.