Prisons are not safe places for women

This article references self-harm, suicide, and domestic abuse. 

Women in Prison is a national charity that provides support to women facing multiple disadvantages, including women affected by the criminal justice system. Here, Sarah Uncles, Policy and Research Coordinator, writes for GLAMOUR about the major threats to women’s safety in prison. 

Self-harm in women’s prisons is at an all-time high. This is a line we find ourselves repeating every three months when new statistics from the Ministry of Justice on safety in custody are published. Every day, there are more than 52 incidents of self-harm in women’s prisons. The rate of self-harm is eight times higher than in men’s prisons.

We know that women who come in contact with the criminal justice system have often been long failed by the very structures designed to support us when we fall on hard times, such as the care, health, education and welfare systems.

We also know that almost two-thirds of women in prison report experiencing domestic abuse, and one-third were in the care system at some point during their childhood. On entry into prison, almost half (46%) of women report harmful substance use, compared to 27% of men. 

There is well-established evidence that community-based support is more successful at addressing the root causes of women’s offending, which so often include experiences of trauma, domestic abuse, mental ill-health, debt, homelessness and harmful substance use. Yet as a society, we have become increasingly reliant on disappearing people to prison. 

5,000 women entered prison last year. As many as three out of five women are sent to prison for sentences under 12 months, and almost a quarter of women entering prison each year are there for theft. Even a short period of imprisonment is enough to lose your home, children and job. Too many women are being set up to fail and are met with punitive and disproportionate responses to the challenges they experience – rather than getting the support they need in the community. 

In a damning report, the prison inspectorate recently commented that HMP Eastwood Park was “failing in its most basic duty – to keep the women safe.” Regretfully, this is not an anomaly.

[A Prison Service spokesperson told ITV News: “This is a deeply concerning report, and we are already addressing the serious issues it raises, including appointing more staff and creating a new task force to improve women’s safety at the prison.]

12 months earlier, the inspectorate found that at HMP Foston Hall, “The response to women in crisis was too reactive, uncaring and often punitive” and that the prison had no strategy to reduce self-harm to improve the care for those in crisis. Shockingly, messages left on the prison’s 24/7 crisis hotline for families to call if they had concerns about someone in the prison had not been checked for six weeks. 

[A Prison Service spokesperson told BBC News: “We have taken a series of actions to address the challenges at HMP Foston Hall – putting in place more senior staff, creating a new safety team and developing specific plans for the most violent prisoners.”]

In one prison, more than eight in ten women said they were experiencing mental ill health. But the prison had no psychologist, which meant cognitive behavioural therapies or interventions for those who required higher intensity treatments, such as for post-traumatic stress, were not available.