Gender-sensitive support
This is a guest post by Indy Cross, Chief Executive of Agenda Alliance (@agenda_alliance):
A Call to Action, a new briefing from Agenda Alliance and Alliance for Youth Justice, has revealed young women are the worst affected by skyrocketing rates of self-harm in women’s prisons.
Agenda Alliance’s analysis shows that young women are self-harming more than any other age group in women’s prisons, and on average, are harming themselves every 10 days. Self-harm among this age group has been consistently rising over the last four years.
Trapped
The release of the most recent Safety in Custody statistics from the Ministry of Justice has shown that self-harm incidents rose by 65% in the last year, raising the alarm regarding women’s safety in prison. Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, commented upon the release of these statistics:
“There is a group of women who are absolutely trapped in a cycle of mental health difficulties, substance issues, homelessness, crime and prison… These are often the most vulnerable, very unwell women, some of whom should quite frankly be in secure hospital, not in prison.”
This, alongside the conclusion of the Coroner’s report into the death of Baby Aisha at HMP Bronzefield in mid-November, has prompted widespread discussion around the treatment and vulnerabilities of women serving custodial sentences, and the urgent need for increased use of community-based solutions to keep women and their children safe.
Young women’s justice project
Previous Agenda Alliance and Alliance for Youth Justice research, part of the Young Women’s Justice Project, affirms this, evidencing that most young women in contact with the justice system have histories of violence; abuse and exploitation; poor mental health; substance misuse; poverty or no safe place to call home. They found that most young women in trouble with the law have experienced abuse from a family member or someone they trusted. More than half of young women in custody had been in care as children.
A young woman they spoke to for the briefing highlighted the dire lack of support whilst she was inside, and the way prison triggered her pre-existing trauma, pushing her to self-harm for the first time:
“I went to prison when I was 21 years-old, up until than I had no history of self-harm although I suffered domestic violence throughout my entire childhood and teens from the hands of my family. There was no help on offer, nothing… was left to deal with my traumatic past of abuse on my own. My only coping mechanism was to turn to what I had known throughout my life, ‘pain’. So that’s what I did, inflicted pain on myself.”
Linked vulnerabilities
Despite this patchwork of linked vulnerabilities, young women’s specific mental health and social needs prior to and whilst in prison are shown in this briefing to be going unaddressed. Due to being a minority within a minority – A Call to Action calculates young women make up just 9% of all women in prison – there is little age-specific guidance and practice in place for young women, before, during, and after they come into contact with the criminal justice system. The urgency of this need is growing, as the number of young women in custody is projected to have increased by 50% in the last year.
This oversight extends beyond prison. In a national review of Police and Crime plans by Agenda Alliance, just two were found to include a specific approach to young women’s criminalisation. Young women report feeling “unsafe”, “alienated” and “retraumatised” in services designed for men and boys, or adult women – yet 60% of local authorities do not provide any gender-specialist services for girls and young women. This means opportunities to tackle the drivers of young women’s criminalisation early in life, and divert them away from the criminal justice system, are being missed.
A call to action
A Call to Action therefore places the crisis in young women’s mental health in prison in context, and puts forward 5 key, actionable, recommendations for age-, gender-, culturally, and trauma- responsive approaches that would better serve their needs. These emphasise the need for prevention, early intervention, and diversion, delivered through community-based support and specialist services. Their research highlights examples of these approaches already being delivered successfully, such as Advance’s delivery of a new pilot Youth to Adult probation hub for young women in Newham. Here, young women can attend probation appointments within a trauma-informed, women-only, hub, and access wrap-around support for up to 12 to 18 months from keyworkers, and peer support from groups.
With the long-awaited Young Women’s Strategy still to be published, and upcoming Police Crime Commissioner elections in 2024, there is ample opportunity for these recommendations to be incorporated into policy and practice, and stop this cycle of harm for young women at our prisons’ gates.
Agenda Alliance and Alliance for Youth Justice demand:
- Collaboration with young women who have experience of the criminal justice system to design future policy – including the forthcoming Young Women’s Strategy
- That government ends a young woman’s 18th birthday being an arbitrary cut-off point for vital support services, such as mental health provision. Ensure continuous services for young women who have been in care as children to stop them falling through gaps
- All government departments should ring-fence funding for culturally-responsive specialist support responding to the needs of Black, Asian, Minoritised and migratised young women and girls, with further funds for organisations which are led ‘by-and-for’ these communities
- Training for police to understand the impact of abuse and trauma which drives offending. Police should be encouraged to use specialist services in the community so that prison is a last resort
- Data on safety in custody must routinely provide a breakdown by age, as well as gender, for increased transparency.
