No to Women Prisons (Photo: BBC)

Whilst the story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia’s, an Indian offender in the UK, was a positive one, inspiring a Bollywood movie; most tales are not. Ahluwalia, a victim of domestic abuse, killed her husband after leading 10 years of life, full of agony and misery, with him. She was fortunate to have her life sentence quashed in 1992 after her guilty plea to manslaughter charge was accepted.

The mother of two is now known in both India and the UK, for being honoured at the first Asian Women Awards for breaking the taboo of domestic violence, and for prompting a change in the British law. Still, majority of women, who are not only minor offenders but also victims of homelessness, heavy debt, mental illness, drug addiction and domestic violence, don not get justice in punitive societies like the UK.

Donna Williams, an ex prisoner, is one of them. She spent two years in Styal prison, two miles southwest of Manchester Airport, for breaching conditions. She is glad to survive it through, but feels sorry for those who can not. She was taken in for harassing a social worker with whom she had an argument.

“I was going through a mental depression and probably needed a cure for that,” said the 25-year old, in her trembling voice. “Instead they locked me in for 2 years.”
“The officers in prison treated us like dirt and didn’t have the time to attend to prisoners` needs,” she said. “There was no sort of psychological help provided, considering my state of mind and what I was going through,” said the resident of North Wales, recalling how she tried to take her life so many times.

The 25-year old Williams is not alone. There are about 4,390 women in UK prisons and the gender makes up more than 5 percent of the UK’s total prison population of 80,937, the Home Office data as of September 14 shows. According to the government’s findings, the most common offences are theft and handling stolen goods and most receive sentences of less than a year. Women commit less crime than men: just 20 percent of offenders in England and Wales, who are cautioned or found guilty, are women. Four out of every five known offenders are male.

Meanwhile, in India, women make up for less than 4 percent of the prison population, which stood at 325,000, according to the National Human Rights Commission’s most recent annual report published last year. Most women in India are incarcerated for petty offences, mainly committed to escape poverty, according to India Vision Foundation, a non-profit and non-government organization to bring reform in prisons. That can be explained when about 300 million Indians have to live on an income of less than 1 dollar a day.

The proportion of women in Indian and UK prisons is quite close and so are the natures of their offences. Women prisons are filled with those, who commit minor offences, and are vulnerable in nature, with backgrounds of poor mental health, abuse, poverty and disadvantage, said Frances Crook, director at Howard League Penal Reform, a London-based charity organisation.

“Prison should be only used for violent offenders,” Crook said. “Majority of them (women) have had mental health interventions and prisons aren’t equipped” to deal with their mental-health needs, she added.

The Howard League recommends resources should be transferred to community programmes and treatment facilities for females. Crook emphasized the current system does not meet rehabilitation needs, with two-thirds of women released from prison reconvicted within two years.70 percent of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders, according to Prison Reform Trust. Half of those sentenced to custody are not registered with their general practitioner prior to being sent to prisons.

Recent analysis of data drawn from OASys, the national offender assessment tool by analyzing 158,161 female offenders assessed in 2005, found that 39 percent had been victims of domestic violence; 33 per cent had accommodation needs; 32 percent had misused drugs; 29 percent had education and training needs, 28 percent had financial needs, 24 percent had misused alcohol, 16 percent had particular needs in relation to employment and 10 percent were assessed as posing a medium, high or very high risk of harm to children.

Ex-prisoner Williams’ mental condition deteriorated in the prison as she was “more depressed” being away from her family.

"I was cutting myself up. I just thought, I’m in prison and I might as well give up on everything else,” said Williams, who was initially put under “suicide watch,” but was later taken off it. She has seen other vulnerable women like herself suffer too. She has lost a friend, with mental-health and drug addiction issues, who ended up committing suicide, and witnessed another inmate hanging in a cell right across hers.

All these concerns were voiced in the Corston report, titled as the review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system. The report was published in March in the wake of the deaths of six women at Styal prison between 2002 and 2003. Of the 43 recommendations made by Labour baroness Jean Corston, the main ones include custodial sentences for women must only be for serious and violent offenders, and that “the existing system of women’s prisons should be dismantled and replaced by smaller secure units for the minority of women for whom the public requires protection.”

Although the previous home secretary, John Reid, was trying to remove vulnerable women from prisons, the report was not overly welcomed by the Home Office, which said that it would be carefully studied and examined before implementing any changes. Lady Corston said large proportion of the women in prison in England and Wales could be better dealt with in community centres, which could deal with their problems of mental illness, addiction and history of abuse.

“I am dismayed to see so many women frequently sentenced for short periods of time for very minor offences, causing chaos and disruption to their lives and families, without any realistic chance of addressing the causes of their criminality,” she said.

Carrie Mitchel, a spokeswoman for English Collective of Prostitutes, which campaigns against punitive measures against prostitution, also wants the government to do more, and soon. “The government needs to make sure they have enough money so that these women do not get into these situations where imprisonment in the only option,” she said, adding, a lot of them are single parents trying to raise their kids by resorting to crime.

More than half the women in prison are mothers, another reason for the government to carefully evaluate custodial sentences for them. It is estimated that almost 18,000 children a year are separated from their mothers through imprisonment, according to the Corston report. The effect on these children is “often nothing short of catastrophic,” said Lady Corston in her publication.

No one can explain this better than Sue May, who was in prison for 12 years for a crime she claims she did not commit. May, who has always maintained her innocence for killing her aunt, was freed from the prison in 2005 after a parole board agreed her release.

“My kids have fallen out and I feel this happened because I was in prison for a crime I did not commit,” said the 61-year old mother of three. “It is a disjointed family we have now, which would have never happened in my presence.”
May’s older son was 25 and the twins were 23 when she was sent to prison. She was lucky that her kids were a bit older and she had the support of her family and friends during her imprisonment but not everyone in prison is fortunate enough to have that cushion, she said.

“I was the main bread earner at home and my being in prison meant my kids were left with very little,” she said. “They could have easily gone the wrong way had it not been for all these people supporting me and my kids.”
May knew a lot of mothers, who were left homeless, after their time in prison. “The system is not in place and there is no help for people after they leave the prison,” prompting women to re offend, she added. She has now appealed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission so that she can be referred to the Court of Appeal to prove her innocence.

The proportion of female prisoners re-offending has doubled in the last decade and so has the women population. The Fawcett Society, an organization that leads campaign for equality between women and men in the UK, does not think that the government is doing enough to address some of the key issues.
In their recent report published on July 11, the organization said “At a national level, central Government policy relating to female offenders is felt to be contradictory.” The report cited the Home Office’s 9.15 million pounds commitment to developing community provision for women offenders and women at risk of offending, but has, at the same time, increased the prison capacity for women, which undermines some of the resettlement efforts.

The Howard League claims community programs are much more successful at reducing crime rates. Research indicates that 64 percent of female prisoners are convicted again within two years of release, versus 47 percent for those given a community sentence. Community programs also cost between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of taxpayers' money a year for each offender versus 39,000 pounds for a prison inmate.

The public opinion survey on women in prison conducted by ICM, a market research company, showed that 86 percent of the 1,000 people polled showed support for community alternatives to prison. Also, almost three quarters did not think mothers of young children who commit non-violent crimes should be behind the bars.

Women should be treated differently from men, as the recent findings from the Fawcett report suggest that the “pains of imprisonment” are severe for women, who have higher rates of self-harm, mental illness and suicide in custody than men. The loss of family ties and separation from their children make for a disrupted life.

“The Fawcett Society's findings and Baroness Corston’s review have provided compelling evidence that Britain's criminal justice system is failing vulnerable women,” said a spokesperson from the Equal Opportunities Commission. “Wherever the criminal justice system touches women's lives - whether as victims of crime or as offenders - the new gender equality duty has the potential to make services work better.”

While the Ministry of Justice acknowledged their awareness of “people in prison who ought not to be there,” it said, it is for the courts to decide in individual cases whether a prison sentence is appropriate or not. “We have outlined our intention to remove these where appropriate, and to use tough community sentences to deal with less serious, non-violent offenders. Government is keen to encourage greater use of community alternatives for women wherever possible.”

Lady Corston said a radically different approach was needed, with ministers announcing a clear strategy within six months to replace existing women's prisons such as Holloway and Styal with small, geographically dispersed, multi-functional custodial centres within 10 years.

To judge by what the women ex-prisoners say, perhaps there is a need to take a prompt action in making changes to the current penal system, just like they did in Ahluwalia’s case, where the British judiciary, for the first time, recognized that the defence of provocation could be applied to women who kill in response to long periods of abuse. Her case upturned the British judiciary and her appeal and retrial are now a part of every basic criminal law text in Britain. Her high-profile case prompted the making of a Bollywood movie “Provoked,” which was released earlier this year and starred Aishwarya Rai, India’s most popular actress.

Unless the authorities do something, there will be more psychologically impaired women like those as Williams and May, who are everyday dealing with the after effect of prisons.

“I am trying to start to get my life back on track but I don’t have the confidence,” said former prisoner Williams. “I still don’t go out much and like to be alone.”

May also enjoys her time in solitary and isolation.

“Whether you have committed a crime or not, you are damaged in a prison,” she said. “I was locked inside for twelve years and got used to that life. While now I like spending time with my family, my best time is still the time on my own.”

Although the UK society is more advanced and developed than India, its prison system is in shambles. Whether it is East or West, the judicial service has a duty to protect vulnerable people like women in prisons. It also has a responsibility to find other alternatives to penalize minor offenders. Incarcerating an increasing number of women is not the answer but addressing core issues, such as, mental heath, poverty, lack of support system for women with kids is the key.