Call for closure of women's prisons

The government is being urged to introduce a programme of closures of women's prisons in order to help reduce re-offending.

The Howard League for Penal Reform said that there should be a transfer for resources to community programmes and treatment facilities in order to tackle women's needs and reduce re-offending.

Launching a new Prison Information Bulletin on women and girls in the penal system, the charity that the current policy of imprisonment has failed to keep women prisoners safe, does not meet their rehabilitation needs and cannot ensure public protection when 67% of women released from prison are reconvicted within two years.

The bulletin also said that the increasing male prison population is impacting on women's prisons.

Plans to convert two existing women's prisons - Bullwood Hall in Essex and Brockhill in Worcestershire - to male prisons, has resulted in vulnerable women being moved to prisons across the country and their sentence plans being interrupted.

There are currently 4,600 females in prison in England and Wales.

A review of women prisoners, conducted by Baroness Corston, is currently underway, following the deaths of six inmates at Styal Prison, near Wilmslow, Cheshire, between August 2002 and August 2003.

Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "We hope that the current review will provide the impetus for the government to think radically about reducing the women's prison population so that only those very few women who do pose a danger to the public remain in custody.

"The vast majority can be managed safely in the community where they can make amends for their offending and help to heal the damage done by crime directly with victims or with the wider community."

(KMcA)