Epidemic of self-harm sweeps women’s jails
originally published: 27th June 2009
The number of women deliberately harming themselves in prison has almost doubled in five years – despite repeated government promises to improve conditions in women’s jails.
Officials recorded 12,560 cases of women prisoners injuring themselves – mainly by cutting and burning – last year, equivalent to almost three incidents per inmate. In 2003, 6,437 instances of self-harm were recorded in English prisons, about 1.5 per inmate.
Although women make up just five per cent of the prison population in England and Wales, they account for more than half of all self-harming incidents.
Many of the women in prison have been convicted of minor crimes, but suffer high levels of mental illness and drug abuse. The largest number of incidents last year was in Eastwood Park prison, in Gloucestershire, where 2,584 were recorded, compared with 683 just five years earlier. High levels of self-harm also occurred in Styal, Cheshire (2,103 incidents last year), Holloway, north London (1,829), Bronzefield, west London (1,517) and Peterborough (1,337).
Paul Holmes, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, who obtained the figures, said: “It is nothing short of a disgrace how women are treated in our overcrowded penal system. It shows how desperate the situation is that the number of incidents has doubled.”
He said: “The issue of women in prison has been ignored for far too long. There are record numbers behind bars but no evidence of a corresponding rise in women committing more serious crime. “The Government must realise prison is not the right place for female offenders who pose no threat to the public.”
Control techniques left young offenders with broken wrists
originally published: 23rd June 2009
An urgent inquiry is being sought into the use of force by staff at a young offenders’ institution in Northumberland after 10 inmates in two years were left with serious injuries which included broken wrists.
The chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers, makes the call for an independent investigation into the use of “control and restraint” techniques at Castington YOI in her inspection report published today.
The report says that there were 364 “use of force” incidents at Castington last year, including 280 which involved the use of “control and restraint” techniques by staff on inmates aged 15 to 21.
“The number of times force was used was comparable to similar establishments. The principal concern in this area was the discovery that, over a two-year period, the use of control and restraint on young people had led to seven confirmed fractures and three suspected fractures,” says the chief inspector’s report of her inspection, which was carried out in January.
“Inspectors had never previously come across so many serious injuries sustained in this way. These incidents have been thoroughly investigated internally, but no coherent explanation had emerged from the scale and frequency of these injuries.”
Remembering Pauline: One Year On…
originally published: May 2008
Pauline Campbell was found dead on 15th May 2008, lying on the grave of her daughter Sarah. Sarah died in January 2003 in HMP Styal.
INQUEST’s staff were very sad to receive news of the death of Pauline Campbell. We advised and supported Pauline after her 18 year old daughter Sarah died in Styal prison in January 2003 and through the long and difficult investigation and inquest process.
Her grief and anger at the horrendous circumstances in which her daughter died and the insensitive way she, as a bereaved parent, was treated after the death motivated her tireless campaigning to expose the continuing death toll in women’s prisons.
Howard League for Penal Reform fund to commemorate Pauline
In the last five years 43 women have taken their own lives in prisons and already this year two more have been added to the toll. The deaths of women in prison are still a national scandal.
The Howard League for Penal Reform have issued an appeal to support their national campaign to keep the issue of women in prison in the forefront of the public mind.
Pauline Campbell was a modern day suffragette. After the death of her only child, she held vigils outside prisons when a woman had committed suicide. She held 28 such vigils and was arrested 15 times. Despite being charged five times she was never convicted of an offence.
Soon after Sarah’s death, Pauline Campbell became a Trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform and the charity have now decided to set up a fund to commemorate and continue her campaign.
The deaths of women in prison are still a national scandal. 43 women have taken their own lives in prisons in the last five years and already this year two more have been added to the toll. Tragically, one of the women hanged herself in Styal, a jail plagued by deaths and self-injury and severely criticised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons yet again last month. On her first night in the prison and sentenced to 28 days for theft, she was found suspended from a ligature in the first night centre of the prison.
For more information follow these links:
Read the appeal letter >
Donate to the campaign >
Information on women in prison >
