President Margaret Smith, centre, with Rachel Halford, right, and Laurel Townshead from the charity Women in Prison
EIGHTY per cent of the women jailed in Britain have mental health issues and sixty per cent of them have been the victims of either sexual or physical abuse, members were told.
In a talk littered with such alarming statistics, two directors of the charity Women in Prison Rachel Halford and Laurel Townshead spoke about the damage and disruption prison causes to the lives of vulnerable women.
When mothers are imprisoned children are taken into care and recent figures showed that sixty per cent of them then went on to become offenders themselves.
Many of the women had had a difficult life, said Rachel Halford, having explained that the charity was set up in 1983 by a woman who’d been in Holloway Prison.
“Most of the women pose no risk to the public and we’d like to see far fewer of them jailed in prisons designed by men for men.
“It’s also expensive,” she said. “Prison costs £53,000 a year compared with £11,000 on a community alternative.”
As well as campaigning for more projects to keep women out of prison, the charity gives advice and support especially when women leave prison. In many cases they will have been incarcerated miles from their homes and families as women’s prisons are so few and far between so they need help with issues such as housing, legal rights and benefits.
Rachel said the charity continued to call on the government to act on its commitment to the recommendations of the Corston Report, commissioned six years ago by the previous administration
The report provides a blueprint for reform that could lead to a less damaging prison system for women.
Corston called for the use of prison for women to be kept to a minimum, in the rare cases where the individual was judged to be a serious and dangerous offender. She called for a better and more widespread use of community sentences.
Women in Prison was campaigning for an amendment to the Breaking the Cycle Bill currently at the report stage in the House of Lords, said Rachel.
Progamme action convenor Lesley Hobbs thanked the women for their enlightening talk. She said their aims and objectives were similar to those of Soroptimist International.
“We’re both organisations run by women to help women and I’m sure we will be able to collaborate on some issues in the future,” she said as she handed over a donation of £50.