WOMEN’S PRISONS: ARE THEY NECESSARY?

Prisons were designed primarily to contain violent male offenders, to protect society from the anti-social behaviour of men who murdered, robbed, beat, abducted or rioted. Most offences committed by women tended to be non-violent, associated with poor upbringing, poverty, mental illness, or stresses associated with child rearing or relationships with violent men. The question is whether prison is a suitable place for people with this profile, whether society is served by an institution which hardens and criminalizes rather than rehabilitates.

This question is particularly urgent when the nation is overwhelmed with over 80,000 prisoners, prisons at almost full capacity, which puts intolerable burdens on space, resources, and the capacity to rehabilitate offenders and reintegrate them into society. Research shows that women offenders tend to be single parents brought up in care, to have suffered mental illness, drug abuse or abusive relationships. Crimes such as shoplifting and prostitution relate to needs to support dependent children or substance abuse, and custodial sentences tended to aggravate these problems as children are left in the care of social services, or with families who already have difficulty coping because of poverty. While women constitute only a small fraction of prisoners (about 5 per cent), it seems perverse that their numbers should contribute to the crisis of overcrowding and the problem of prisons to educate and rehabilitate.

From the point of view of human rights, women put in prison instead of drug treatment or mental health centres seem to have a case for claiming abuse. Drugs and mental health affect not just mothers but their children, as well as their community. Women who are products of the failure of care, find their children condemned to the same failing system when they themselves are imprisoned. They see their children being groomed for prostitution, the drugs trade, and other ills associated with the practice of youngsters brought up outside the family environment.

It would appear sensible that government rethink the practice of locking up mothers away from their children or other loved ones, especially when little is done to reverse the social conditions which led to their offence in the first place. Instead of prisons designed in the nineteenth century set up to deal with the problems of violent men and have substantially proved to be ineffective, women of the twentieth-first century need twentieth-first century institutions, which make use of the latest modern technology and are run within systems that are backed by socially aware philosophies.

Such institutions would have an educational role, with an emphasis on social functioning, child rearing, and provide the women with useful skills for a modern society. Women in need of treatment for drug dependency and mental illness should have facilities for dealing with their problems. Children should be educated to prevent them from falling into the same perils as their mothers.

To those who insist that crime should be ‘punished’, it could be pointed out that the punishment is socially dysfunctional in that irrational treatment does nothing to correct the irrationality of anti-social behaviour such as ‘crime’. If crime is a function of poor socialization, due to poverty or poor family relationships, the solution should be geared towards improving social function in a modern society. Punishment damages already vulnerable women who lack the skills or defences necessary to satisfy the demands of twentieth-first century society. But advocates of punishment should understand that the need for rehabilitation is not simply an option but the necessary replacement of sentencing.

At present in prisons there are British women with a variety of problems which should be dealt with in hospitals or through education. A disproportionate number of these inmates are from the socially disadvantaged minority communities who suffer economic and educational deprivations. Such women’s cases are not totally hopeless when they have access to family and community support. Foreign nationals who are thousands of miles away from home and their loved ones are the women isolated from all the factors recognized as necessary for rehabilitation and reintegration into their societies.

FPWP-Hibiscus, of which I am Director, is a specialist organisation for these women, and we have substantial research data on the dysfunctional aspects of their imprisonment. Unlike the media stereotype of young, glamorous drugs couriers who offend to cater for luxurious lifestyles, these women tend to be poor, badly educated single mothers in their late twenties to mid-thirties. They offend as a means of coping with their poverty, desperation and need. Their countries are very poor with little economic opportunities for women, especially those with children who lack education.

Most are first offenders, of otherwise good character, who are very religious. Some are coerced or deceived into carrying drugs. But because of the political pressure created by the tabloid press, these first time offenders do not benefit from the mitigating circumstances available to even hardened criminals. Current practice is that they are subjected to harsh sentences based on the quantity and quality of drugs. A naïve, vulnerable foreign woman who smuggles a kilo of cocaine may be given a longer sentence than a professional drug baron who smuggles tones of the drug and murders to protect his trade.

The purpose of such sentencing policy is supposed to be ‘deterrence’ but our research shows that long sentences do not deter, because they do not address the problem of poverty. Most couriers are ignorant of the sentences they would receive if caught here with drugs. The drugs barons convince them that they will simply be deported instantly if arrested. Only concerted public information and education campaigns in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Jamaica have succeeded in reducing the numbers of couriers. Long sentences on their own merely serve to fill the prisons to capacity, reducing their ability to rehabilitate.

To correct this erroneous policy the government and judicial system needs to:
· Reduce the length of sentences and allow for mitigating circumstances to be considered.
· Resources spent uselessly in ‘punishing’ the women could be dedicated to educating and rehabilitating them.
· Enlightened educational public information campaigns are far more effective than punishment, and should be funded and pursued as a means of prevention.
· When it is identified that there is no security risk, passport fraud should be decriminalised to reduce overcrowding.
· Government needs to increase co-operation with countries around the world from which the women come, so that the process of establishing identity can flow faster and more smoothly.
· The Government needs to come to agreements with countries abroad, so that women may serve part of their sentences in their own countries.
· There is a need to provide the means to help the women overcome their poverty.

Without changes in thinking about imprisonment, policy will remain in the nineteenth century with nineteenth-century institutions dedicated to achieve the opposite of what is intended. Poor countries are ill served by having thousands of their nationals lock up in rich countries. And rich countries spend millions punishing vulnerable women who could have been helped by more positive, pro-active policies to avoid offending.

Olga Heaven M.B.E. - Director FPWP/Hibiscus
speech delivered at the Conference on How to Reduce Needless Prison Overcrowding -
some practical solutions on 3 October 2007, Windsor