Social Work Services and Prisons Inspectorates for Scotland

Women Offenders - A Safer Way

In December 1997, The Scottish Office Minister for Home Affairs directed that the Prisons and Social Work Inspectorates for Scotland should review, and make recommendations about, community disposals and the use of custody for women offenders in Scotland.

This followed the apparent suicide of a convicted prisoner in HM Institution Cornton Vale. Her death was the seventh at Scotland's only female prison (population around 170) in the past 30 months; an unacceptable rate, especially since there had only ever been one previous suicide at Cornton Vale, nine years earlier. Five of the prisoners had been on remand, two had been convicted and sentenced to prison.

The Scottish Prison Service is acting on recommen-dations from Fatal Accident Inquiry findings and from research projects it has commissioned. A Safer Way proposes a significant shift in emphasis which might help reduce suicides in custody.

The Review

A team from the Prisons and Social Work Services Inspectorates carried out the review, inviting local authorities, voluntary agencies and other key groups to submit information and views about female offenders. A Safer Way reflects the comments received and also the relevant literature and research material reviewed by the team.

The review team's report:

• examines the nature of women's offending in Scotland and the social and personal circumstances of women in Cornton Vale, which houses 96% of female prisoners in Scotland
• highlights the many fundamental differences between the women and their male counterparts, and explores the penalties imposed
• looks at the points in the criminal justice process where decisions are made about how women are dealt with
• considers the opportunities to influence decisions at each stage
• considers the availability, suitability and effectiveness of services in the community
• considers possible ways forward

Most importantly, the team highlights the context in which women end up in Cornton Vale. Female offenders are a disproportionately vulnerable group who may in fact be at greater risk of self-destructive behaviour while in custody.

Profile of Women Offenders

Women constitute only a small percentage of the criminal cases coming before the courts in Scotland. Although 52% of the overall Scottish population are women, only 14% of those convicted in 1995 in Scottish courts were female. They make up an even smaller proportion of the prison population - 3% in 1995 - and tend to serve much shorter sentences. Their offences are mostly of dishonesty or of some other minor nature. Most of the women are of an age when they are likely to have dependent children.

Almost all women offenders could be safely punished in the community without any major risk of harm to the general population. A few are in prison because of the gravity of their offence, but the majority are there either on remand or because they have not complied with a community disposal.

The backgrounds of women in prison are marked by experience of abuse, drug misuse, poor schooling results, poverty, psychological distress and self harm. These characteristics that may make rehabilitation difficult on release also make the experience of imprisonment very difficult for some women. For many, confronting the painful realities of their personal and social circumstances without drugs to obliterate the pain, may feel overwhelming. The experience of custody, the sense of loss, the break up of family relationships, the loss of control and feeling of helplessness and fear, or experience of being bullied, all increase the risk of already vulnerable women committing suicide or self harm.

"The number of women prisoners who actually pose a grave danger to the general public can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand"

The Prison Reform Trust

Conclusions

• Women's offending and women offenders' needs are often different to those of men.
• The number of women offenders sent to prison could and should be reduced.
• The public must be protected from violent crimes ... but less than 1% of female convictions are for violent offences.
• Women's offending frequently relates to drug abuse and is often rooted in poverty. The offences they commit, eg prostitution, may make them more susceptible to fines. Up to 52% of female prison sentenced admissions are for fine defaulters.
• Community service is used less frequently for women.
• A high proportion of women offenders suffer from a history of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Many are vulnerable to suicide attempts, with imprisonment becoming the final trigger for acts of final desperation.
• More women offenders than men will have dependent children living with them and these women are likely to be lone parents.
• No one reason for suicide emerges from recent Fatal Accident Inquiries ... but a history of drug abuse and withdrawal problems shortly after being locked up is, with few exceptions, a common factor for remand and convicted prisoners.
• The only relatively sure way to reduce the number of suicide attempts in custody is to reduce the number of women being imprisoned, by a twin-track strategy of:
  • more options in the community, with the provision of bail information and support, supported accomodation, diversion from custody and deferred sentences.
  • fewer prision places, by adapting Cornton Vale accomodation to support more permanent double cells and bed-sits, providing mutual support for vunerable women.
    

Recommendations

The review team recommends that:

1. The Scottish Office should examine whether increased services are required, particularly in the West of Scotland, to support court decision-making about the use of bail.
2. The Scottish Office should consult with the courts and local authorities on what more could be done to reduce the numbers of women defaulting on their fines and those being received into custody as a result.
3. An inter-agency project should be set up in Glasgow under the direction of a high level steering group to bring together all the main partners in the criminal justice system, to resolve at a local level the issues identified in the report.
4. All local authorities should review their arrangements to ensure that criminal justice social work services are tailored to work with women offenders, and report the outcome of their reviews to Social Work Services Inspectorate by the end of November 1998.
5. Information currently collected by The Scottish Office, local authorities and others, should separately identify data relating to women offenders. The Scottish Office should collate and publish statistics on women offenders from the year 2000 onwards.
6. The Scottish Office should consult on how to ensure that, by the year 2000, young women under 18 years of age are not held in prison establishments; and on how and by when to achieve the same for males under 18. Young people under 18 who require a custodial environment should be held in secure accommodation.
7. The Scottish Prison Service should forthwith revise its estates strategy for women and implement a number of other measures, via the following:
   • making permanent the recently introduced initiative of doubling up some prisoners, by adapting buildings at Cornton Vale.
   • creating facilities for women offenders from the West of Scotland at HMP Kilmarnock. The existing facilities at Inverness and Dumfries could be reviewed with a view to modest expansion.

Copies of the full report A Safer Way are
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Our purpose is to work with others to continually improve social work services so that:

• they genuinely meet people's needs; and
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