‘If the government is serious about a reduction in the number of women in prison, it should ensure that women leaving prison are supported.’ Photograph: Mark Harvey/Alamy View image in fullscreen ‘If the government is serious about a reduction in the number of women in prison, it should ensure that women leaving prison are supported.’ Photograph: Mark Harvey/Alamy Prisons and probation Letters Keeping women out of prison must be the focus Readers respond to an editorial on overcrowded jails and plans to convert parts of the women’s prison estate for use by men
Your editorial ( The Guardian view on the prisons crisis: moving men into women’s jails is not the answer, 10 September ) is right to argue that the prison capacity crisis cannot be solved through a series of short-term fixes. Victims need confidence that the government has a credible long-term strategy for the criminal justice system, not another piecemeal intervention designed to buy time.
I share your concern about the pressures facing probation services. There are also legitimate questions about the impact on policing, but we cannot discuss the prisons crisis without confronting the crisis in our courts.
About one in five prisoners are now awaiting trial, often because cases are taking so long to be heard. Some defendants spend so long on remand that by the time they are sentenced, they are released from court, having effectively already served their sentence. Victims will rightly ask whether that is justice, and the public will rightly ask what it means for public safety.
The government points to the removal of foreign offenders as part of the solution to prison overcrowding. Yet a third are held on remand awaiting their day in court due to a court system in crisis.
Prisons, courts, probation and policing are interconnected. The government cannot hope to resolve the prisons crisis if it does not also resolve the crisis in our courts. Delays leave victims waiting years for justice, drive up the remand population and place further pressure on an overcrowded prison estate. As victims’ commissioner, I need assurances that the prime minister is focused on pursuing a strategy for the whole justice system, not simply responding to the latest emergency. Claire Waxman Victims’ commissioner for England and Wales
We are a collective of women’s charities, frontline services and women with lived experience of prison. We saw first-hand the devastating impact that Holloway prison’s closure had 10 years ago. For 170 years, it was a paradoxical space – a place of trauma, but also a crucible of feminist resistance and home to dozens of frontline services. From the suffragettes to the activist Chris Tchaikovsky, women’s history unfolded there. Now it has been razed.
This invites the question: what could we build instead? Your editorial offers some answers when it references the Corston review . However, one crucial element is missing: women’s centres. These are spaces where women’s services are brought together under one roof, offering support with housing, domestic abuse, employment, childcare, therapy and more. They help women holistically, rather than simply fixing one area of their lives. Women in Prison reports that for every £1 invested in a women’s centre, £2.75 is saved.
Women’s centres stop women entering the criminal justice system, keep children out of care and relieve pressure on emergency services. We’ve spent a decade campaigning for one on the Holloway prison site. The pu…