Women in Prison comment on Independent Monitoring Board National Annual Report 2024

Content warning: self-harm, suicide.

19 June 2025: The Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) National Annual Report 2024 paints a picture of endemic crises across prisons. It highlights the “harrowing results” of this environment and the failings of short-term solutions that have attempted to reduce the prison population.

For women in prison, the report raises several deeply concerning problems, particularly a deep-rooted mental health crisis among women in prison. This includes very high levels of self-harm, a “high number” of women with complex mental health needs in custody, poor access to healthcare and the ripple effects on wellbeing, and a “cluster site” of self-inflicted deaths at one women’s prison.

Sonya Ruparel, CEO of Women in Prison, commented:

“IMBs’ annual report lays bare the depth of the crisis in women’s prisons, where women drawn into offending by multiple disadvantages – such as poverty, mental ill-health and homelessness – are further harmed, and where self-harm, mental ill-health, and unsafe conditions are widespread.

The conditions highlighted here must be taken seriously and urgently addressed.

It is clear, as it has been for decades, that prison is not a safe place for women. Women who are extremely unwell are being kept in cells rather than receiving medical, psychological or psychiatric care, while healthcare in prison remains deeply inadequate.

We welcome the government’s recognition that most women should not be in prison and its commitment to reducing the women’s prison population through the Women’s Justice Board, and to implementing recommendations from the recent Independent Sentencing Review.

It is important these ambitions are urgently achieved to prevent women from being held in unsafe, harmful environments that actively worsen the very conditions of poverty, domestic abuse, mental ill-health that led to their criminalisation.”

ENDS

  • Women in Prison is a national charity that delivers support for women affected by the criminal justice system in prisons, in the community and through our women's centres. We campaign to end the harm caused to women, their families and our communities by imprisonment.