UK: When jail doesn't work

Britain debates rising rates of female imprisonment and lessons from abroad.

Thea C. GarlandAugust 5, 2010 06:06Updated August 5, 2010 06:06

Prisoners at Her Majesty's Prison Pentonville walk through an atrium May 19, 2003 in London. There is now a debate in Britain about the criminal justice system, including the treatment of women in jail. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

LONDON, U.K. — A month before Rebecca Smith was found dead in her cell in a British prison with a plastic bag tied around her head, she had told prison staff that she would end her life by self-suffocation. A subsequent investigation found that she had a history of mental illness, including several suicide attempts.

During the investigation authorities asked why prison officials had failed to keep her on suicide watch, and why she had been placed in a prison without an in-patient health care center, nearly 200 miles from her family, who could have given her much-needed moral support.

Her case underscores the current debate in Britain about the criminal justice system. Shortly after the coalition government took over in May, the new justice secretary Kenneth Clarke suggested that jailing people didn’t work.

"There is no link between rising levels of imprisonment and falling crime," he said as he launched his campaign against short prison sentences.

Prime Minister David Cameron has also described short jail terms as "meaningless" and has called for more community service programs.

Last year Britain spent 4.38 billion pounds ($6.79 billion) on its penal system and 20 billion pounds ($31 billion) on its criminal justice system, making it one of the most expensive in the world.

British Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, Nick Herbert, said in a recent speech: “We spend more of our GDP on criminal justice than France, Ireland and Italy.”

Perhaps nothing more acutely illustrates the need for reform than the plight of female prisoners.

Not since the mid-19th century have there been so many women in British jails. Britain’s female prison population has increased 60 percent since 1997, compared with a 28 percent increase for men.

“Practically every country in the world, rich and poor, is seeing their social fabric disintegrate as more and more women are being charged and held in custody, often long distances from families,” the World Health Organization noted in a report last year.

While women make up only 7 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons in the United States according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 2000 and 2008, the female prison population in America rose by 23 percent. More than half of women in federal prisons said they were mothers.

In Australia, the imprisonment rate for women rose by 209 percent between 1984 and 2003, but only 75 percent for men, according to the report “New Gender Rights for Women Prisoners and Offenders."

A report by a British penal reform charity, The Prison Reform Trust, revealed that a staggering 70 percent of British female prisoners had two or more mental health problems; more than a third said they had attempted suicide at some point. More than half of women in British prisons had suffered from domestic violence and one in three had been sexually abused, according to the trust.

Despite these facts, and evidence that prison has more serious psychological implications for women than men, the specific needs of women prisoners are being overlooked, prison reform advocates say.