The argument for creating a gender-informed women’s criminal justice system in which far fewer women were imprisoned, and women thrived in their communities, was won, seemingly, in 2007.
Baroness Jean Corston’s ground-breaking Report on Women in the Criminal Justice System documented women’s very different experiences and needs; and mapped out a vision for a “radically different, visibly led, strategic…holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach”.
In the 18 years since, there has been a remarkable degree of consensus on the need to do things differently for women across successive governments, yet women’s justice remains in crisis.
Numerous policy and practice initiatives have targeted women, yet the numbers in prison are projected to rise. The highest ever recorded numbers of women are held on remand. The incidence of self-harm and violence in women’s prisons is soaring. There’s a huge homelessness problem for women released from prison.
It seems impossible to understand why… until we start learning from history.
In our new report Breaking Out of the Justice Loop: Creating a Criminal Justice System that Works for Women, we explore the limited progress made, and interrogate the persistent systems and policy failures that have hampered positive change since 2007.
We look to other models for solutions, and make the case for a radical new approach to prevent women entering the justice system in the first place.
We argue that applying learning from the past, investing properly and embracing the prevention of women’s criminalisation, will be essential to the success of the new Women’s Justice Board and its strategy.
Carry on making the same mistakes, and women and those working with them will be condemned to an eternity trapped in the justice loop.
