Working with women in prison

Abstract

Approximately, 5% of individuals in prison within England and Wales are women. Whilst there is some slight variation in this figure; due to a relatively high turnover of individuals moving into or out of the prison system; this gender split has remained similar since 2002. However, proportionally, more women are managed on community sentences, with women constituting around 10% of the probation caseload. This is still far short of the roughly equal gender split within the general population of England and Wales. Whilst women are under-represented in the criminal justice system (CJS), those women who enter it need to get the right support and access appropriate services to meet their gender-specific needs. The Bangkok Rules (UNODC, 2011) stipulate the requirements for the treatment of women, whether in custody or serving community sentences. These rules supplement the United Nations’ standards and norms for the treatment of prisoners and those serving non-custodial sentences (UNODC, 2015), which are not gender sensitive. The starting point therefore – and the reason why this book contains a chapter dedicated to women – is that they should be treated differently (in some ways) to men during their contact with the CJS. Whilst the intention of this chapter is to focus exclusively on women, this should not be taken to indicate that men who come into contact with the CJS do not also face a range of challenges, and neither should it be concluded that other chapters of this book have no relevance to women. Before focusing on the differences in provision and the reasons for those differences, it is first necessary to understand a bit more about the women within the CJS. It should be noted that whilst this chapter focuses on women in prison, similar issues are also faced by women within other parts of the CJS and within the forensic mental health systems in England and Wales.