Women in Prison celebrates 40th anniversary
Women in Prison are beyond delighted to celebrate 40 years of radical, boundary pushing drive for change. This has been a period of reflection, strategic steering of Women in Prisons' next steps and celebrating the fact they stand strong, are still delivering impactful change today with a plan to stay and, of course, all the past milestones and accomplishments since the organisation was first founded.
Celebrations have included an oral history project which provided media training to women with lived experience in which I participated. We were taught interviewing techniques for both interviewing and being interviewed. I got to learn how to use them to work with various technological recording devices such as a Dictaphone and Tascam. I then had the privilege and honour to interview two awe-inspiring women integral to Women in Prisons history who have been unrelenting in their fight for equality and justice. The other ladies who took part in the media training have also interviewed phenomenal women key to the legacy of Women in Prison.
I personally thought this was a brilliant and beautiful idea to give ladies like myself with lived experience, the chance to learn new and transferable skills whilst helping to build confidence and a sense of accomplishment in the women and simultaneously capturing the voices key to Women in Prison’s legacy. I personally felt it was like the voices of the older generation inspiring and sharing the history with the newer generation.
Women in Prison also held a fundraising event in which I was honoured and privileged to share my journey as a guest speaker, where all different people came together to celebrate the successes of Women in Prison and its heroic founder.
Women in Prison was set up by Chris Tchaikovsky in 1983 alongside criminologist Dr Pat Carlen. Chris was moved to set up Women in Prison as she was shocked and horrified by the treatment which she witnessed fellow female inmates receive whilst serving a custodial sentence at HMP Holloway in the 1970s. During her time in prison a woman died after setting fire to her own cell.
Chris soon realised that the detrimental and damaging impact that prison was having on women, their families, and the wider community was missing from public and political conversations. Outraged by this she was determined to bring about change. Chris began campaigning, but in the early 1990s Women in Prison was able to start to provide direct support to women in prison, and this widened to the organisation being able to provide support to women in the community via the women's hubs and centres.
Chris passed away in 2002 but her memory, the impactful work she did and heroic legacy will never be forgotten by those who knew and loved her - even those like myself who didn't have the privilege to meet her personally. The work she has done and legacy she has left behind has helped to transform my life despite having not known her personally .
I think it's only right to end this blog with one of my favourite quotes from Chris Tchaikovsky:
"Taking the most hurt people out of society and punishing them in order to teach them how to live in society is, at best, futile. Whatever else a prisoner knows, she knows everything there is to know about punishment because that is exactly what she has grown up with. Whether it is childhood sexual abuse indifference, neglect, punishment is most familiar to her.”
This blog was written by Natasha, a woman with lived experience who supports co-production at Women in Prison and has been an important part of our 40th anniversary project and development of Women in Prison’s strategy, Together in Power 2025-2030.
With thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and players of the National Lottery, whose generous support made the Women in Prison 40th Anniversary project possible.