Outcomes from Women in Prison’s seminal Summit on Ending the Criminalisation of Women

In September 2024, Women in Prison held a Summit in partnership with Clean Break that brought together around 100 people from a cross sector of organisations working with women to address social injustices that lead them to being criminalised.

Delegates were invited to dream of a different future for women in contact with the justice system and what needs to change to get us there. You can read our CEO, Sonya Ruparel’s initial reflections on the summit here.

Last year, the Government announced plans to reduce the number of women in custody through the creation of the Women’s Justice Board. This, alongside the Sentencing Review, signal very positive steps in the right direction, which could lead to fundamental, long-term change for women.

The Summit brought together people from voluntary organisations, women with lived experience, grass roots organisations and funders. The focus of the conversations was to provide solutions to the challenges we so often see leading to women’s criminalisation.

We are at an inflection point for women’s justice and have been reviewing the information gathered at the Summit to ensure the solutions garnered on the day from part of any ongoing work and conversations about this issue. What was clear was that the evidence already exists about the injustices women in contact with the justice system face and what needs to change to address these issues.

The time for talk is over – we now need to see action and change.

The Summit was an opportunity to hear a diversity of views and experiences and provided a foundation for organisations to take away these messages to see what solutions might be practicable for their work. We have synthesised the outcomes from the Summit into three themes that acted as a golden thread through the conversations on the day- prevention, connection and funding. The solutions we expand on here provide a framework for collective action to effect change for women currently caught up in the criminal justice system.

We will be integrating the recommendations raised at the summit in our ongoing influencing work and will be showcasing them at the upcoming Justice and Women event organised by Clinks and the Worshipful Company of Weavers.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and there were additional questions and ideas such as how to shift the public narrative on women in the justice system; how might increasing leadership of black and brown women into seats of power and authority make a difference to racism in the system; and what reforms in health, education and housing might make a difference to women. Delegates also questioned whether “No Recourse to Public Funds” is a racist policy and should it be reviewed, how to ensure women have enough money to afford food, travel and housing and how to build greater local accountability into the infrastructure of the criminal justice system.

The solutions to women’s unnecessary criminalisation do not lie within the criminal justice system - that much has always been clear. Once a woman is in contact with the criminal justice system, we know the consequences can be dire. The stark reality for many women, particularly those who serve a prison sentence is that they can lose everything – from their home, job, children, and, for some, their mental health.

As has been well documented, the root causes of women’s contact with the justice system include poverty, mental ill-health, domestic violence and abuse, and homelessness. For example, we know that 57% of women in prison have experienced domestic abuse while 76% of women in prison report having mental health problems, and the self-harm rate has been continuously at a record high over the past year.

We often hear from the women we work with that they sought help or support from statutory services before they offended, but for a variety of reasons were unable to access it. The reasons for this are complex and extensive, ranging from long waiting lists, tightening of eligibility criteria, or a lack of services tailored to meet women’s needs. Given the lack of investment in community services over the last few years, this picture is not a surprise.

But we do have an opportunity for things to be different. With investment across our public services, including housing and mental health services, we can go a long way to prevent women from being swept into the criminal justice system.

• Radical increase in investment across gendered, trauma informed public services especially housing, mental health and drug and alcohol services.

• Effective gendered diversion schemes with outcomes based on women’s needs and underlying causes of offending.

• Ring fenced funding for early intervention, community support and specialist services for minoritised women.

For prevention to happen, it was obvious to everyone in the room that we need to see real connection across government through more effective cross-departmental working. Time and time again we’ve seen how one poor decision made by a government department can have wide-ranging consequences for women. And in one of the worst-case scenarios, it could ultimately lead to their criminalization.

The Home Office, Department for Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and The Department for Work and Pensions all need to be bought into the vision of the Women’s Justice Board and the need to reduce the women’s prison population. As a minimum, as they develop and implement any new policies, they should ask themselves ‘could this exacerbate the root causes of women’s contact with the justice system?’ And if the answer is ‘yes’, they should commit to doing things differently.

When there is true partnership working, both locally and nationally, this can have a transformative impact for women at risk of or already in contact with the system.

Conversations at the Summit also highlighted a need for much greater collaboration for change across different sectors. There was a strong call for those of us working in the criminal justice space to move outside of our echo-chambers and build relationships with organisations working in mental health, housing and homelessness, and domestic violence and abuse, to name a few.

There are of course already many good examples of where effective cross- sector partnerships are taking place, but this work needs to take place much more readily as it is only by working collectively, with a shared voice will we see real change for women.

• Cross- departmental membership of and commitment to the aims and ambitions of the Women’ Justice Board.

• Cross-sectoral collaborations offering solutions for women both in terms of programme delivery and influencing/campaigning work (e.g. in relation to housing; domestic abuse; poverty; substance misuse and mental health).

• Develop and showcase evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of cross-sector collaborations and partnerships.

Community based services are often incredibly effective in, not only addressing the root causes of women’s offending, but also ultimately reducing the number of women drawn into contact with the justice system. Independent analysis by Alma Economics found that a hypothetical Women’s Centre receiving £1m investment in a given year can support over 650 women and generate £2.75m in socio-economic benefits, including savings for public services and significant gains in welfare for women and their children.

There are approximately 3,500 women in prison today, double the number from 30 years ago. If we are to reduce this number and keep women in their communities, we need resources to reflect the government’s ambitions. Prisons are expensive and incredibly damaging for women’s lives. We need to see a significant redistribution of resources to invest in gender-responsive, community-based solutions for women.

If we are serious about increasing preventative services and keeping women in their communities, the resources needed to support that change need to be made available from government. Not only is this the most effective thing for women and our communities, it also makes economic sense when comparing the costs of imprisonment and its ripple effects on women, families, housing, the care sector and the economy.

• Amplification of the economic argument to Number 10 and the Treasury against criminalisation and the cost to society of putting and keeping a woman in prison.

• Resource community solutions that are economically effective and reduce the criminalisation of women.

One of our four organisational values at Women in Prison is a belief that change can happen. We, and the over 100 delegates who came to our Summit last year, know things can and should be different. It takes courage, investment, empathy, and ambition from decision makers for us to see a significant reduction in the number of women criminalised every year. The evidence for why this change is necessary is clear, and the stepping stones to making that change are already being laid.

Real change is within our grasp- let’s continue to work together to make it happen.