Women doing long jail sentences failed by ‘system designed for men’

Women serving long jail sentences are being treated with programmes designed for violent male offenders and are punished when male prisoners misbehave, a damning new report has suggested.

Research by the Prison Reform Trust, shared exclusively with The Independent, discovered that women serving longer terms are being locked up with those serving short stints. They are also struggling to access education and opportunities for employment.

The study found female prisoners who are subjected to additional security measures are caught in a “catch-22” situation in which they are blocked from accessing the services they require to have their extra security removed.

“There are a number of women in the prison estate who have restricted status, which means they are subjected to additional security measures and they are only able to be held in three prisons,” said Emily Evison, one of the report’s authors.

To have the security measures removed they need to attend compulsory courses held only at other prisons.

She warned female prisoners were being viewed as the same as their male counterparts despite posing less of a risk and also having had very different life experiences.

Although the majority of women in prison are serving short sentences of less than a year, there is a small but growing minority serving very lengthy jail sentences, researchers said.

The number of women serving an indeterminate sentence has risen from 96 in 1991 to 381 in September of last year.

Researchers conducted long-term interviews with dozens of current and former female prisoners on long sentences and also with frontline workers and experts.

“Because there are a small number of women’s prisons, women on long sentences are often housed alongside those on short sentences,” Ms Evison, women’s policy lead at the Prison Reform Trust, said.

Being in close proximity to those close to being released is bad for longer-serving women’s mental health, she said.

Ms Evison explained that women serving longer sentences must engage in offender programmes to prove to a parole board they have reduced their risk in order to be released, but many of these courses are designed for men.

There are problems with the amount of money available for women’s prisons and many female prisoners “feel they are set up to fail in a system in which they are an afterthought”, she added.

Kate*, a lifer who was imprisoned for a violent offence, told The Independent she served over 20 years in prison but is now living in the community.

“Prison is not created for women, every course was written for men,” she added. “Although a couple are coming on board just now designed for women, I know women who were in for perpetrating sex offences and they were doing courses designed for male sex offenders.”

Kate said female prisoners are penalised when things go wrong in male jails, warning women are “background noise” in the wider criminal justice system.

“I was fortunate, I had the experience of being on a wing with all lifers,” she added. “I don’t know how I would have coped now – in lots of women’s prisons you will come off remand and be sentenced and be put on a wing among prisoners with sentences that vary from a month to longer.”

She voiced frustration about her current licence conditions, which forbid her from going on holiday – saying she is desperate to go to the Louvre in Paris due to her interest in art history.

“Women are much more likely to be coming into the criminal justice system having been at the hands of domestic abuse, childhood abuse, and mental health problems,” Kate said. “The criminal justice system has this antiquated view that women shouldn’t be in court in the first place and demonises them.”

Researchers found women on long sentences had lengthy stints of “nothing time” where they were not able to use their time effectively or make progress.

One female prisoner said: “For long-termers, you have the bit at the beginning, the bit at the end, and the great depression in between.”

Another added: “It stops being about rehabilitation and just becomes incapacitation.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: “The number of women in prison has fallen dramatically since 2010 but we continue to provide specialist support to those in custody – helping them deal with the issues which lead them to crime in the first place.

“This includes rolling out bespoke support with extra face-to-face time with specialist staff, embedding forensic psychologists at every women’s prison, and improving mental health training for all frontline officers.”

*Kate’s name has been changed to protect her identity