A prisoner arriving in hand cuffs at the reception area of HMP Holloway (Photo: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)

Two years after the closure of HM Prison Holloway the government has finally published its long awaited strategy for female offenders.

As governor at — what was before its closure in 2016 — Europe’s largest prison for women, I saw first-hand the dramatically damaging impact that short prison sentences have. A short spell behind bars is long enough for a woman to lose her home, her job, and her children, with little time to begin to help her to tackle the reasons she ended up there in the first place.

I’m proud of what dedicated and compassionate staff at HMP Holloway were able to achieve during my time as governor. However, it’s not realistic to expect prisons to break addictions, provide support for the many who have been victims of domestic violence, reconnect women with the accommodation and jobs — which they’ve subsequently lost — and reunite children with their mothers, all in a matter of a few short weeks or months. It’s small wonder that I saw the same faces coming into my prison again and again.



The evidence is clear that short sentences not only fail to help people to turn their lives around, but they also fail victims. For women given a sentence of less than 12 months, six in 10 had reoffended again within a year of release. By comparison, a community order where a woman is given the support and the responsibility to address those issues that draw them into a life of crime, produce significantly better results.


Lower rates of reoffending are not just another statistic. They’re fewer people’s lives blighted by the impact of being a victim of crime. They’re more lives successfully turned around. And they’re fewer pounds spent on locking people up.

This is not a call for more lenient sentences for women, and that is not what the Ministry of Justice has announced. Every community penalty must by law contain a punitive element. But as the government’s new strategy makes clear, women’s offending is overwhelmingly made up of non-violent crime, often theft.

Last year more women were sent to prison for theft than for violence against the person, robbery, sexual offences, fraud, drugs, and motoring offences combined.

Women are more likely than men to commit non-violent crimes, and as a result they disproportionately serve these damaging short prison sentences. The government is rightly proposing solutions that seek to deal with this in a better and more effective way. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t lessons to be drawn from this strategy for men as well.

The prisons minister, Rory Stewart MP, said this week during his appearance before the House of Commons Justice Committee, that he would like to significantly reduce — ‘if not eliminate’ — sentences of 12 months or less. He’s right that it makes sense for everyone, regardless of gender.

The flow of people in and out of jails on short sentences creates instability within our prisons and in the lives of those we send there, whilst achieving little else. I may have been able to stop a woman from taking drugs whilst she was in my care, but I had no control over what happened when she was released to the pimp waiting for her at the prison gate.



It doesn’t have to be this way. Despite the many positive promises of change that this new strategy announces, what is missing from it are the resources to deliver long-term change. The government must address that central practical issue – good words are not enough.

There are already valuable services in the community, working successfully with women to help them to turn their lives around, but they are few and far between and their funding is precarious. Given the resources they need, they will deliver many of the strategy’s ambitions – without it, they may go to the wall.

Prison takes away many things, not least the ability to take responsibility and control over your life. Giving people the support, the tools, and the alternatives to become law abiding citizens helps not only them, but all of us.

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