John Podmore, author of Out of Sight, Out of Mind, addresses the ability of Britain's prison system to look after its female inmates over at Prospect. His conclusion: 'Britain’s prison system is failing its women inmates'. Read the full article here.
'The coalition government has made a plea for a revolution in the prison system — but so far not a shot has been fired. And yet radical leadership is required from the government. Let it start with the closure of Holloway Prison, the sale of the land and its investment in something better and more humane. For Holloway is just one of the many prisons in Britain that is catastrophically damaging its women inmates.'
...
'women who had been self-harming were being detained in punishment cells — against the prison rules. One woman had been punished because she had tried to hang herself.'
...
'Later that year, the women’s wing of Durham prison, the country’s only maximum security unit for women, was closed after a spate of suicides and self-harm and a critical inspection report.'
...
'In the last two decades there has been only one shaft of light in the darkness: the Corston Report of March 2007. Commissioned by the Home Office to write a report on the needs of vulnerable women in custody, Baroness Jean Corston, a former Labour MP, concluded that there was a need for a “distinct, radically different,” approach, which took into account the overall health of inmates.'
...
The women’s prison estate, remains a prison system for men that locks up women. The statistics of women in custody remain shocking. There are 4,000 women in prison, a number that has doubled since 1995. Of these, 60 per cent are serving a term of less than six months. Half come in on remand with 60 per cent not going on to receive a custodial sentence.'
...
'The Prison Reform Trust regularly catalogues their vulnerability, as well as the threat of social exclusion and poor mental health. Few inmates are violent or dangerous, except to themselves. They are failed by the jails incarcerating them and they have been championed by no one since Baroness Corston’s report. Pleas for a Women’s Justice Board, along the lines of the long-established Youth Justice Board, have been firmly rejected by Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt. There is no money.'