Women who challenge - Nacro

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CHAPTER 2Table 1 Offenders found guilty or cautioned for indictable offences in 2000Offence Female offenders Male offendersNos. in 1000s % Nos. in 1000s %Theft and handling 53.5 60 142.1 37Drugs offences 9.3 10 76.5 20Violence against the person 8.2 9 47.1 12mothers, more likely to have to provide for theirchildren (see Heidensohn [1994] 3 for a review).This may indeed be a motivating factor whichmay be relevant in some cases but it cannot betaken to explain the motivation for female crimegenerally. It does not, for example, explain whythe peak age of female offending is 14 and mostfemale offenders have grown out of crime bythe time of their late teens.Findings from the 1998/99 Youth LifestylesSurvey 4 , in relation to self-reported offending bymale and female 12-30 year olds, identified druguse and frequent drinking as importantpredictors of offending and also illustrated thatfamilies, school and peer groups were keyinfluences on a young person’s likelihood ofoffending. One of the difficulties about makingjudgments, however, is that the data on crimedo not give the background circumstances tothe offence or the characteristics of the offender– which may sometimes go some way towardsexplaining why the crime occurred – so it isimportant to be cautious about makingassumptions that particular circumstancespredispose individuals to commit offences.Women in prisonThe most alarming issue in relation to femaleo ffending is the explosion in the female prisonpopulation. Between 1993 and 2000, the femaleprison population rose by over 115%, compare dwith a rise of 43% for men. By Febru a ry 2001, theoverall increase had reached 145%, compared to47% for men 5 . In October 2001, the female prisonpopulation was 4,040, a staggering increase of18% over the previous year, compared with ani n c rease in the male population of 5% 6 . Thedramatic increase led the Director General of thePrison Service to urge sentencers to think againabout community alternatives before sentencingwomen to custody 7 .The increase is not accounted for by acorresponding increase in serious offending, asfigures showing the number of female offendersfound guilty or cautioned for indictable offencessince 1990 do not indicate an inexorable rise inserious female crime. Instead they fluctuate,showing a peak in 1992 followed by a fall in1996 back down to 1990 levels. The increaseappears to be due primarily to changes insentencing by the courts as a result of toughersentencing guidelines and legislative changeswhich have led, for example, to harsherpenalties and thus longer custodial sentencesfor drugs offences. This appears to have had asignificant effect on the overall size of thefemale prison population, as we shall see next,though other factors may also have had a part toplay, such as the championing by recent HomeSecretaries of the argument that ‘prison works’.Chart 1 Female offenders found guilty orcautioned for indictable offences1051009590858075ssSource: Home Office (2001) Statistics on Women and the CriminalJustice System London: Home Office3 Heidensohn F (1994) ‘Gender and crime’ in Maguire M, Morgan R andReiner R (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology Oxford:Clarendon Press4 Campbell S and Harrington V (2000) Youth Crime: Findings from the1998/99 Youth Lifestyles Survey Research Findings No.126 London:Home Office5 Nacro (2001) Women Beyond Bars London: Nacro6 Home Office (2001b) Prison Population Brief, England and Wales:October 2001 London: Home Office7 Reported in the media on 26 November 2001sssspage 8
Women who challenge: women offenders and mental health issuesWomen remain a tiny proportion of the totalprison population even though that proportionhas increased from 3.5% in 1993 to 5.2% in2000. In June 2000, 20% of the female prisonpopulation were on remand. The most commonoffence for which women are received intocustody is theft and handling at 42% in 2000, inkeeping with the fact that this offence accounts,as shown above, for the larger part of femaleoffending. The figure compares with 23% ofmale receptions for the same offence. However,because sentences for such offences are usuallyshort, the proportion of the female sentencedpopulation held for them drops to 20%. Incontrast, as a result of longer sentence lengths,37% of the female sentenced population arebeing held for drugs offences even though suchoffences account for only 20% of receptions intocustody. There is also a difference, though notas large, between the proportion of receptionsfor violent offences – which also carry longsentences – at 13%, and the overall percentageof the female sentenced population held forsuch offences (16%). By far the majority ofwomen prisoners have not committed a violentoffence and do not pose a danger to the publicin this regard.There is also a difference between male andfemale prison populations in terms of theirethnic composition, which demonstrates thatminority ethnic women are represented inprison at an even more disproportionate levelthan minority ethnic men in the male prisonpopulation. Minority ethnic groups made up 25%of the female prison population, 19% beingblack. In the case of male prisoners, 19% werefrom minority ethnic groups and 12% wereblack. The difference in the proportion ofminority ethnic prisoners in the male andfemale populations is to a large extentaccounted for by the larger percentage offoreign nationals in the female prisonpopulation (15% of foreign national femalesagainst 8% of foreign national males), most ofwhom are held for drugs offences (usuallyacting as drug couriers). The overwhelmingproportion of black sentenced women (68% in2000) are held for drugs offences and, evenwhen foreign nationals are excluded from thisfigure, the remaining proportion servingsentences for drugs offences is still very muchhigher (50%) than that for white women (25%) oreven for black men (19%). Unfortunately, thereare no data to explain the context in which theseoffences were committed, so it is not possible todraw any significant conclusions from thesefigures.If we look at the socio-demographiccharacteristics of women prisoners 8 , we findthat, before being imprisoned, 40% of womenprisoners were cohabiting and 33% were single.The level of educational attainment was lowerthan that of the general population, with 47%having no educational qualifications and GCSEbeing the highest level of qualification obtainedfor 37%. The profile of women prisoners andtheir family responsibilities are examined inmore detail in Chapter 3 when the impact ofimprisonment on women and the evidencerelating to their mental health is considered.Psychiatric morbidity amongwomen prisonersClearly there is a link between mental disorderand offending. This is self evident from dataabout the number of people with mental healthproblems identified at all key stages of thecriminal justice system. Care needs to be takento avoid assuming a causal relationship wherethe link may be no more than a simpleassociation between the two. Nevertheless, thehard truth is that prisons house significantnumbers of people with mental health problems.There have been relatively few surveys ofpsychiatric morbidity in prison populations andsome are now quite dated. Equally, methodologyused in different surveys varies so care must betaken when comparing the findings. Forexample, in a survey of 334 mentally disturbedmen remanded at Winchester Prison, Coid(1988) 9 found that the offences they hadcommitted were frequently minor in nature,such as shoplifting for food or stealing milkfrom doorsteps, and stemmed from their needfor food or shelter due to a lack of necessarycare and support. In 136 of these cases, prisondoctors concluded that, at the time of theirarrest, the offenders were incapable of caringadequately for themselves in the community. A8 O’Brien M, Mortimer L, Singleton N & Meltzer H (2001) Psychiatricmorbidity among women prisoners in England and Wales London:Office for National Statistics9 Coid J (1988) ‘Mentally abnormal prisoners on remand: rejected oraccepted by the NHS’ British Medical Journal 296: 1779-82page 9
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Page 12 and 13: CHAPTER 2study by Dell et al (1993)
Page 14 and 15: CHAPTER 2indicated above, it is dif
Page 16 and 17: CHAPTER 2Table 4 Patients admitted
Page 18 and 19: CHAPTER 3‘typically male’ (viol
Page 20 and 21: CHAPTER 3health problems have been
Page 22 and 23: CHAPTER 32% had a child with foster
Page 24 and 25: CHAPTER 3the frustrations of female
Page 26 and 27: CHAPTER 3women shown by the statist
Page 28 and 29: CHAPTER 3remand and 41% of female s
Page 30 and 31: CHAPTER 3seclusion was used primari
Page 32 and 33: CHAPTER 4What are Government strate
Page 34 and 35: CHAPTER 4schemes - uses drug worker
Page 36 and 37: CHAPTER 4• alternatives to custod
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Page 40 and 41: CHAPTER 4distributed throughout hea
Page 42 and 43: CHAPTER 5Where do we go from here?I
Page 44 and 45: CHAPTER 5Accessing a job and/or tra
Page 46 and 47: CHAPTER 5Evidence from the CARAT pr
Page 48 and 49: BibliographyAllen H (1987) Justice
Page 50 and 51: APPENDIX 2Service modelsForensic me
Page 52 and 53: APPENDIX 2Community-based servicesB
Page 54 and 55: APPENDIX 2The SamaritansThe Upper M

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