OFFICE POLITICS
INSIDER
EVENT REPORT
WOMEN IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Promises of a shift in use of custody for female offenders come with a
degree of complexity by Alan Robertson
▏ ALMOST FOUR OUT OF FIVE women who come into the Willow service in Scotland’s capital meet the criteria for assessment as experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “Tat is significantly higher than the war veteran population in Edinburgh,” service manager Kirsty Pate told delegates at Holyrood’s ‘Women in the Criminal Justice System’ event earlier this month. Nine out of ten women referred to the service, which is targeted at those who have been through the criminal justice system, have experienced domestic abuse, while three in four have engaged in self-harming behaviours. “We had a woman who came into our service and started having really intrusive memories in the [tea/coffee] breaks of our groups,” said Pate. “It took our key worker to sit down
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with her and try to help her work out what was going on. Te fact that people put the kettle on was the trigger because each time she had been raped or abused by her partner, he said to her afterwards, ‘get the kettle on’.” Tackling such trauma has been one of the factors underlying growing calls for a shift away from custody. Almost a year ago the govern- ment announced plans for a new women’s prison, designed to hold almost a quarter of the current capacity of Cornton Vale, as well as five community- based custodial units each able to accommodate up to 20 women. Te units, which will be based in areas close to communities the women are from in order to maintain family contact, are considered a means to deliver intensive support to help over- come issues such as alcohol and
drug use, mental health problems and domestic abuse trauma. “Tere’s an awful lot of women who just think they’re not worth it,” said HMP Cornton Vale gover- nor, Rhona Hotchkiss, operational lead for the development of the women’s custodial estate. “Tere are an awful lot of women who look at what we’re planning and think, ‘that’s too good for the likes of us’. Just like in Cornton Vale, we get a lot of women saying, ‘this is far too easy, a prison should be much harder than this, the food is too good’. And it’s not. Te condi- tions in Cornton Vale are not too good, it’s just that these women are so used to having nothing and expecting nothing and being told that they’re nothing. We’ve got a big job there to convince the women themselves that the com- munity custody units are going to be a good thing.” Workshops are
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