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.

Suicides in UK Prisons (Photo: Pauline Campbell)

Injustices and failures in the judicial system not only take place in a developing country like ours, but also in industrialized nations such as the UK, where an increasing number of suicides take place in the so-called “care” of Prison Services.

“I judge a society by its approach towards vulnerable people,” said Pauline Campbell, an active campaigner against deaths in the British prisons. “Therefore, I refuse to call this country Great Britain, it is just Britain for me,” said the retired teacher, protesting outside a prison in central London, where a female inmate died recently.

For the 59-year-old woman activist, there is nothing to lose anymore. She does not fear fighting the system, the police and the government after she lost the most precious thing in her life four years back, her 18-year old daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Campbell. The mourning mother has been hauled off to the police station fourteen times for protesting female deaths in prison and has been charged four times for offences including obstructing the highway

“After I lost Sarah, I felt I do not have anything else to lose, she was everything to me,” said the grieving mother with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I will not stop embarrassing the government. That is my raison d'être, now, to protest the deaths of women in jail.”

Sarah was one among 39 women in prison in the UK, who died in the last four years while being on remand, sentencing or trial.

Although the total number of suicides dropped to 67 in 2006 from 78 a year ago, a welcome drop after three years of record levels of self-inflicted deaths, it is likely to touch higher levels again. A recent study by the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody shows that there have been 68 jail suicides so far in 2007.
In comparison, about 1,575 custodial deaths took place in 2005-2006 in India, up from 1,493 in a year ago, according to most recent data provided by the National Human Rights Commission, which was set up in 1993 as a human rights monitoring institution constituted by the Parliament. More than 50,000 custodial deaths has been reported in the last 10 years, but the number of suicides is not revealed or known, which makes it difficult to compare with the suicidal rates in the UK.

Still, the conclusions drawn suggest that the state of India’s justice systems speaks volumes about the human rights abuse in a country known to be the biggest democracy in the world. Alike the UK, prisons in India also suffer from problems including overcrowding, lack of facilities, transparency of activities in the prison and inhuman treatment and torture of detainees. It is common in Indian prisons that the detainees are assaulted as they arrive in the premises, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.

“This is a practice continued after the colonial period and due to wrong perception, allegedly to 'soften' detainees so that they could be easily controlled while in custody,” the Commission said on its website, adding torture is not considered as a crime in the world’s second-most populous country.

Suicide and self harm is one of the biggest challenges the British prison service faces today, according to the Howard League Reform. There are several cases of neglect, like that of Sarah’s, in the UK.

Although on "suicide watch", Sarah somehow managed to ingest an overdose of antidepressant prescription drugs while held on the prison's segregation block within 24 hours of being in the prison. She was convicted for manslaughter. She was carried out of the jail unconscious, and died several hours later in hospital without regaining consciousness. Almost a third of suicides occur within the first week of someone arriving in custody and one in seven is within 48 hours.

Between 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm on 18 January 2003, she took Dothiepin, and then told the prison guards and a nurse what she had done. During the inquest it emerged that the officers and nurse who were in the cell when Sarah told them, walked out, locking her in, then had an argument about whose responsibility it was to call the ambulance. The ambulance was delayed eight minutes at the gate of the prison, while she vomited blood in her cell. When the paramedics got to her, she was unconscious.

The angry mother thinks her daughter was "crying for help" but was instead locked in a cell, alone. A catalogue of errors, including avoidable delays before staff called for an ambulance, led to her death. At the inquest in 2005, the jury agreed that Sarah didn't intend to die, and for that reason a suicide verdict was not returned. The jury's damning narrative verdict included a statement that a "failure in the duty of care" contributed to her death.

Suicide is more common among men. A study in the Lancet, the world's leading independent general medical journal, found the male suicide rate in prison was five times that in the general community.

Nearly three quarters of suicides last year occurred in male local prisons, compared with 60 per cent a year ago “ in spite of improvements in first night and induction procedures in many prisons,” according to the report by Anne Owers, the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. Mental illness, overcrowding, drug and alcohol addiction were the main reasons, according to research experts.

Most prisons are overcrowded and lack the staff or resources to provide intensive support for new inmates, according to the latest annual report from "The pressure of population, the reactive culture in some prisons and the vulnerability of many of those in prison, will continue to make it difficult for prisons properly to protect those in their care,” the most recent report by Owers said.

Paul Cavadino, Chief Executive of Nacro, a crime reduction charity, said in a press release that signs of depression and suicidal intent can be overlooked by prison staff due to overcrowding. “Overcrowding makes it more likely that staff will miss signs of bullying of weaker prisoners which is an important element in some suicides,” he said. “It increases the pressure to move prisoners to jails far from their families, making visits harder. This can increase the isolation and depression of potentially suicidal prisoners.”

Debbie Kirby, Ministry of Justice spokeswoman, agreed and acknowledged that “the prison population contains a high proportion of very vulnerable individuals, many of whom have experienced negative life events that we know increase the likelihood of them harming themselves.” She also said that the issue of suicide in prisons is taken very seriously in the face of population pressures and continued efforts are being made to reduce the numbers.

In 2006, the number of self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales was at the lowest since 1997. There had been a steady increase in suicides since 1994 - up by 53 per cent. Forty-two per cent of such suicides occur during the first month of a prisoner arriving at his/her first prison or being transferred to a different one.
The Home Office was split and the Ministry of Justice was created in May this year. The newly created office will be responsible, in particular, for the courts and tribunals, and for criminal justice, including prisons.

As of September 14, the prison population stood close to a record high with 80,937 people. In June, the population touched its peak at 80,977 inmates. Campbell is concerned that as the number of prisoners soar, more and more deaths will be inevitable.

“So many people are dying at the hands of the state and there is never any accountability,” said Campbell. “No officer or staff of the prison has ever been held accountable, while there is ill treatment of the most vulnerable people of the society held in care and custody of prisons. It is appalling and we have to put an end to this.”

Campbell is not alone. Among grieving parents is also Alan Powell, who lost his 26-year old daughter, Caroline Powell earlier this year. The mother of five died while on remand for burglary. Caroline, who had suffered domestic violence and lost her kids to social services, hanged herself in her cell.

“She was owed a right to life and a legal duty by the prison authorities to keep my daughter safe - a sad failure in both these duties,” said the father of the deceased. “Caroline was not the first and she certainly would not be the last,” said the angry father, who often wonders “what was going through Caroline’s head when she decided to take her life.”

Besides most prisoners being vulnerable, neglect of duty, physical and verbal abuse from officers also lead to deaths of most people, said Eric Allison, prison correspondent at the Guardian and co-author of the book ‘Strangeways: A serious Disturbance’. To end further deaths in these prisons, the prison services “must avoid their running as breeding grounds for more crime,” said Allison, who blames the government for not convicting responsible officers.

There is still “a lot of abuse” that prisoners are subjected to in prisons, he said. The Manchester-based reporter has also served more than 16 years in jail. “If you abuse, offenders become victims and they feel victims at the hands of law. They vent their anger in a negative way and are full of hatred,” said Allison, who recalls, how he wanted to commit a mass murder in Manchester prison as he wanted to take revenge from most officers.

Catherine Hayes, a case worker of campaigning group Inquest, a charity organization which investigates deaths in custodies, can not agree more. “Many of these deaths raise issues of negligence, abuse of human rights and failure to care for the vulnerable,” she said. Despite evidence of unlawful or excessive use of force or neglect, “no prison officer has been held responsible,” added Hayes, who has looked after 100s of cases. Since 1995, Inquest has investigated more than 2,000 deaths.

Lord Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, is angry with the government and is pushing the government to consider extending the Corporate Manslaughter Bill to include deaths in custody, which has been denied previously.

“The managers should be accountable for these deaths,” he said. The new offence would apply when a person's death is caused by state’s negligence, but ministers wanted to exclude prisons and police.

Ministry of Justice does not agree with the inclusion of the extended Bill. Spokeswoman Kirby said “we are opposing extending the offence to deaths in custody, as it would have wider impact on policy making. Any deaths in custody would necessarily bring into question areas of wider public policy making and would not simply focus on operational issues.”

Still, Ramsbotham does not understand their explanation. “Why it is that grieving families, as victims of government policy, should not be treated in the same way as victims of a private-sector company,” he said, adding that the government also needs same laws and policies for private and public prisons, which is not the case right now, giving a lee way to state prisons.

He also emphasized the need to stabilize prison management and recruit, train and supervise responsible staff. Involving the community in helping offenders, reliable monitoring systems, currently under threat, should be maintaining make prison a safer and a better place than a suicidal spot, he added.

“Human life should not be subject to politics, it is not a mark of civilized country,” he added.

That echoes comments from Campbell, who is disappointed in the government for doing very little.

“It's time the government woke up to the important job and learnt from their lessons in the past,” she said. “Otherwise more and more people will die in the so-called care of prisons.”

“It's time the government woke up to the realisation that prisons must uphold the legal duty of care, she said. “When a prisoner dies in the care of the State, we are told that "lessons will be learned", but 38 women prisoners have died from self-inflicted injuries since my daughter's death in 2003. So, for me, the words are fairly meaningless.

“Prisons are not above the law, and all inmates have a right to life under Article 2. While prisons continue to flout the law, more and more people will die in the so-called care of these institutions.”

As she makes her point, death toll is increasing. Among the most recent ones is the apparently self-inflicted death of 25-year-old Lisa Doe, who died at a prison in a prison in Surrey, south-east of London, on September 11. She was the seventh woman to die this year.