‘When I first went inside I wanted to die’: What life’s like inside a UK women’s prison

Only days after Labour’s election victory, Keir Starmer has already said the country has “too many prisoners” and “not enough prisons”. 

It comes after he appointed James Timpson as his prisons minister, who said in a February interview that only a third of the 85,000 people in prison in England and Wales “should definitely be there”. Another third “probably shouldn’t be there but they need some other kind of state support,” he continued. 

The Mirrorreported that one proposed solution put forward to the government is to release female prisoners early to free up an entire prison that could be used for men instead. 

• Women are asking to stay in prison beyond their sentence because they don’t have a home to go to
• How the UK prison system ‘sets people up to fail’

Other reports have predicted that the new Labour government could authorise plans to release people with prison sentences of up to four years who’ve served 40-50% of their time, which would include thousands of women currently in prison serving sentences under 12 months for non-violent offences. 

There are significantly less women in prisons than men, with 3,657 women in jail compared to 83,796 men. And 58% of prison sentences given to women in 2022 were for less than six months. 

“If authorised, Labour’s plans to ease overcrowding by releasing women on short sentences is a good thing,” Miranda Dobson of the charity Women in Prison, told the Big Issue. “These proposals validate that most women should not be in prison in the first place. Most are there on short sentences under 12 months, for non-violent offences. And we know women are swept into contact with the criminal justice system because of drivers like mental ill-health and domestic abuse.”  

For years, women’s charities have been calling for prison reform, saying prison is not a safe or appropriate setting for women who have mental health problems, experienced domestic abuse, and face homelessness or unsafe accommodation upon release. 

Nadia was placed on remand in prison for five months before being released with all charges dropped in July. 

“When I first went into prison, I wanted to die,” Nadia, in her late 50s, told Big Issue. “The first night I was so scared. You could hear the other women screaming and crying out. So many women in there are so unwell. They shouldn’t be in prison – they need mental health support.”

When she spoke to the other women in prison with her, she heard stories of women locked up because of drugs and related offences. 

“But very often, it was because they’d been abused as children and started drinking or taking drugs to cope,” she said. 

Indeed, 76% of women in prison report having a mental health problem, and according to Dobson, are not getting the medical or psychiatric support they need. Meanwhile, 70% have experienced domestic abuse, and 53% were abused as children. 

Self-harm rates among women in prison were the highest ever reported in 2023, at an increase of 52% in the year to March 2023. 

“There are many reasons behind this [increasing rates of self harm],” said Dobson. “Prison is not a safe place for women, and self-harm can be a last resort to cope with that environment. There were changes through the pandemic which made prison an even harder place to be for women. Women were in their cells for longer periods of time, and were more isolated. Some of those restrictions are still not 100% back to ‘business as usual’ due to staff and resource issues in prisons which have exacerbated women’s mental health challenges.”

For pregnant women, prison is of “acute concern” due to the additional impact on the foetus. 

“Women in prison are twice as likely to give birth prematurely,” Janey Starling of Level Up, who campaigns for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women, told Big Issue. “The stress a woman experiences in pregnancy can increase her cortisol, which when it crosses the placenta, can affect her baby’s brain development. For pregnant women in prison, even a short sentence could have a lifelong impact on her child.”

Dobson added that prisons are increasingly being used as “places of safety” for very unwell women, and that she’s watched as the use of remand, where people are held in prisons while awaiting trial or sentencing, has massively risen. 

“Our frontline workers described the negative mental health impacts that women on remand experience as a result of being ‘stuck in limbo’ as they await the outcome of their case,” she said. “And most women on remand are either found not guilty or aren’t sentenced to custody.”

While Nadia awaited the decision on her sentencing in prison, she said she was “treated as guilty” even though she hadn’t even been convicted of a crime. 

“It had an impact on my mental health,” she said. 

There was no privacy in her small room with two other girls, and sleep deprivation affected her more than she could have expected. 

“Then there was the treatment by the officers,” she said. “Some are nice, but some treat you like a second-class citizen, like an animal. When I was leaving, an officer said to me: ‘Be good now.’ But I hadn’t done anything in the first place. I felt really angry, violated, and humiliated.”

At the end July, stats around Safety in Custody, which look at self-harm, suicides, and assault in prisons, are due to be released and it is expected there will be another increase in incidents of self-harm in women’s prisons.  

In their new campaign, the charity Women in Prison is calling on the UK government to prioritise prevention for women rather than criminalising them and cutting them off from their communities in prison. 

Though there may be a “very small number of cases” where a woman at risk to the public needs a secure environment, Dobson said that most women need community-based support services that won’t separate women from their families and friends.  

“However, prisons as they currently exist are not a suitable environment for any woman,” Dobson said. “At the moment, they can’t even access basic essentials like a toothbrush, medication, and clothes. No one should be subjected to that environment.”

After having been released from prison earlier this month, Nadia assuredly said most women shouldn’t be in prison. 

“Prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation,” she said. “But I don’t see how there’s any rehabilitation happening, especially for women on short sentences.”

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