Women in prison are resorting to self-harm because of “astonishing gaps” in basic services including strict time limits when contacting their children and bans from using washing machines for dirty underwear, according to a watchdog’s report.
A survey of women in prisons in England found that “the frustrations of day-to-day life” and a “lack of basic care” were driving many to hurt themselves.
Women offenders were struggling to keep in touch with loved ones with a third receiving no face to face visits at all, a report released by HM Inspector of Prisons said.
A “basic lack of decency” compounded these challenges, inspectors found. Women were given ill-fitting prison-issue men’s clothes, while “a bizarre rule” prevented them from laundering underwear in a washing machine.
Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector, said: “Disappointingly, this report highlights a lack of basic care to help women cope day by day which, for some, is then a cause of self-harm.”
There are more than 3,600 female prisoners in England, held in 12 prisons. More than half have children under the age of 18.
In three of the four prisons surveyed, about a third of the women were more than 50 miles from home and at one of the sites it was over half of women.
None of the prisons provided transport to and from nearby train or bus stations. Inspectors said that the prisoners’ families were often unable to afford expensive taxi fares to get to the prisons and often attended “short, inflexible” visit sessions.
Secure video calls were available at all four sites, but the women were often frustrated by a limit of one call a month.
“The calls were not being used creatively to support women, for example in enabling them to read a bedtime story to their child, or to facilitate attendance at parents’ evenings,” the report said.
It found 84% of women felt unable to cope at some point in prison, and that the needs of women in prison exceeded the capabilities of prison staff and their environment.
None of the prisons allowed women to wash their underwear in a washing machine and instead they had to wash it by hand in a small bowl in their cell, a policy not found in men’s prisons.
One offender told the inspectors: “I wash all my socks and underwear in the same bowl, but you only get one bowl and on a weekend, you get your razor. So, you got to do everything [referring to shaving, washing up and cleaning underwear] in that same bowl … its unhygienic.”
Another woman described arriving with only one pair of knickers. She was forced to hand wash them every night for months as no spare pairs were available, the report said.
Women, in particular those remanded into custody, often arrived with few belongings and relied on what the prison could provide.
In one prison there was no footwear available in sizes four to six, the most common sizes for women, the report continued.
“It was astonishing to find that most sites were not issuing prison clothing designed for women,” inspectors said.
Across women’s prisons, the self-harm rate is 5,785 incidents per 1,000 prisoners, which was more than eight times higher than in men’s prisons – 664 incidents per 1,000 prisoners.
In an interview with the Guardian last month, the prisons minister, Lord Timpson, said the government planned to reverse the increase in the number of women being sent to jail. Instead, hundreds of female offenders could be tagged and sent to addiction and rehabilitation centres, he said.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, said the report was “shocking” and “a wake-up call” for her department.
“We must do things differently which is why – as part of our Plan for Change to make our streets safer – we have launched a new women’s justice board to reduce the number of women in prison, and better support those who must still be imprisoned.”
Source: theguardian.com
