More women are in jail than ever before, often for minor offences. The invisible victims are their children

Women in prison: 'It took six months of anguish to get my child'

Women in prison: 'It took six months of anguish to get my child'

When she was a child Tricia Walsh used to hide under her bed. She knew she wasn’t safe from anyone who came into the house. She was sexually abused by her father from an early age. Her mother was a violent alcoholic. “She was so drunk she didn’t know who was coming in and out of my bedroom.”

By the age of 12 she had been sexually abused multiple times by relatives and the people who came to her parents’ party house. “I learned that I deserved having my head smashed into the floor, that I must have deserved to have my leg pulled from under my bed. To me it was normal. But they all took something from me that couldn’t be put back together again.”

At 12 she attempted to take her own life, at 13 she dropped out of school and fled “into the arms” of a notorious bikie gang. To numb the pain she started taking drugs. “I became addicted to everything that was out there.” She had her first child at 15 and three more by the time she was 19. When her first child was six months old, Walsh began her prison journey. There would be six more prison sentences over the next 20 years.

I grew up with a mother behind bars. But her innocence wasn’t the only lie I was sold | Fernanda Dahlstrom Read more

Her youngest daughter was only 13 when she started her last long stretch, a nine-year sentence for selling drugs, “when she most needed her mum. I didn’t know what was happening to her, who was looking after her.” In her grief for her children, in prison “you count every second of every minute of every hour of every day”. Walsh was 44 by the time she started putting herself back together, and graduated valedictorian for a social work degree at university. All those wasted years.

As confronting as it is, Walsh’s story is not an unusual account of a woman’s trajectory into the prison system. It is not even the worst story, but it is a common story.

According to research by Sisters Inside, an advocacy group for women in prison, up to 90% of women in prison have been sexually abused and 98% have experienced violence. Emeritus professor Judy Atkinson, a Jiman/Bundjalung woman who has researched women in prisons for decades, says she has never encountered anyone in prison who has not had a violent childhood. She believes 100% of prisoners have a “clear diagnosis of complex trauma”.

Time stops when you go through those prison gates. You are taught nothing, you go brain dead Kymberley Ranganui, former inmate

At a time when the crime rate in many Australian states has dropped, we have the highest rate of incarceration, with an overrepresentation of women, 34% of whom are Indigenous. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the general rate for women going into the prison system rose by 10% in the year to September 2018.

These women are often predestined for prison from an early age, they have been treated as worthless, they had no chance. At the Sisters Inside conference in Brisbane last November, the stories told by former prisoners all spoke of brutality that started in early childhood, drugs and alcohol as teenagers, institutionalisation, juvenile detention; historical violence that has snowballed down the generations all the way from colonisation.

According to the Sisters Inside founder, Debbie Kilroy, prison has become a place for warehousing people with mental illness, disability and substance abuse. “We know,” says Kilroy, “that the issues that present for women in prison are about poverty and homelessness. Prison is the default response for poverty, homelessness, mental health, drug addiction, abused women.

“We know that many women in prison can’t even read or write. The incarceration of Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal women has increased 640% in the last 20 years and they are the ones who are the most brutalised.”

According to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, June Oscar, it is a system which “punishes people for poverty”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner June Oscar. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

April Long, the national program manager of Shine for Kids, which works with the children of prisoners, says: “The criminal justice system is full of the women and men who need the most healing and support.” These are women, she says, for whom the world has never been a safe place. Women who are punished over and over again.

“What we do when multiple systems have failed them,” says Long, “including education and health, is that we end up incarcerating them and victimise them even more.”

Kymberley Ranganui, now 36, was only 15 when she first went to prison. After suffering childhood abuse she would be in and out for the next 20 years on drug offences.

“Time stops when you go through those prison gates,” she says. “You are taught nothing, you go brain dead.

“You become so institutionalised that you start believing that system is the only place you exist, the only place you matter, you believe these women are your sisters, you can’t adapt to society, you are a product of your own environment.”

She says the recidivism rate is high because women come out and are given no support, “not even a voucher”, and “go back to their old ways” because they “can’t cope and don’t know how to do it. They go fuck it, and sometimes go back purposefully.”

Ranganui’s son Jakob was only a month old when she was given a two-year sentence at the age of 25. “They didn’t take anything into consideration, my past history or my pregnancy. I had reports, psychologists coming in with me,” she says.

With leaking breasts, on “an emotional rollercoaster, I was breaking down, my hormones were everywhere, it is not good physically, mentally, emotionally, having to do a sentence, having to worry about my baby” while she fought both her sentence and to have her son in prison with her. It took six months of anguish to get her child.

“It is in a child’s best interests to be with their mother. Can’t we figure out another way? Why not do a sentence out in the community?”

When Ranganui came out of prison with an 18-month-old son, “I was on my own, I didn’t even have food for him or any parenting programs.”

Domestic violence a major cause of women’s incarceration

While no one disputes that violent offenders should be in prison, most women are in prison for relatively minor crimes that come from substance abuse, poverty and desperation.

Kilroy points to tough new bail laws women who are on remand, due to the tough new bail laws, because they have been involved in domestic violence but who will not get a custodial sentence.

“Twenty per cent of the women on remand are in prison for that. Some of them don’t even have a criminal history or they have a very minor criminal history, but they are languishing in prison on remand for months. By then she has lost the house, the kids, a job, property. You never get any of that back.”

Domestic violence directly or indirectly is a major cause of women being incarcerated. Directly when she finally retaliates or indirectly when there is, say, financial abuse.

Crowdfunding campaign to free Indigenous women 'shocked' by WA government response Read more

“Then you might offend so you can feed your children or pay for their school uniforms. A woman traumatised by constant violence can starting drinking or using drugs to self-medicate,” says Dr Samantha Jeffries from the School of Criminal Justice at Griffith University.

When the police turn up to an incident they can put an order on both people without differentiating who the perpetrator is, or can mistake the victim for the aggressor. “He is calm,” says Kilroy, “it is ‘good mate, how are you, mate’, he is a good bloke, you know. She is crying and hysterical and can’t keep it together.” Or she may have breached bail conditions because she changed address in running from a violent situation or be homeless because of it and is not aware of a court date.

When a lawyer seeking mitigation for sentencing asks if they have experienced domestic violence, a woman will often say no. Says associate professor Katherine McFarlane of Charles Sturt University: “If all you have ever known is exploitation and abuse it is not seen as domestic violence. It is normalised.” They can also be protecting the kids who may be with the perpetrator.

According to Long, up to 84% of women in prison are mothers. When a woman receives a sentence, so do the children who depend on her and who are “the invisible victims”.

“The majority of women who come into custody are mothers who have sole responsibility for the care of children. Educational outcomes are poorer, they are most likely to be living in poverty,” she said.

“There are 45,000 kids in our country right now with a parent in prison and an estimated 75,000 who have experienced parental incarceration during their childhood. It is exactly the same trauma and loss as a parent passing away with the added stigma and shame. These are the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our community.”

Children can end up in out of home care, which causes the mother huge anxiety as she has often come through the foster care system herself and knows about the abuse that was the start of her own journey into the justice system, she said.

When she came out of prison Tricia Walsh found that “my two girls were in extremely violent relationships, being stabbed, being beaten. That was my role modelling. My boy ran away to Sydney because he didn’t want to be known as my son. But now I want to live my life creating a space where my grandchildren can be safe. All I want is their safety.”

Now an activist, Vickie Roach came into the foster care system when she was two-and-a-half years old and removed from her mother who was in hospital having a baby and who had been stolen herself.

“As teenagers we were treated as absolute peak offenders because of that initial criminal charge.” Roach would be in and out of prison for three decades before she turned her life around and got a masters degree in writing from Swinburne University.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Indigenous activist Vickie Roach. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

“Nowadays,” she says, “50% of the children we have locked up in this country have been in out of home care. Research suggests that the links between the child protection system, juvenile justice system and adult incarceration are so strong that they could be considered as key drivers to adult incarceration. The risk increases if you are Aboriginal. Aboriginal children represent 90% of all kids on care and protection orders and placed into care. It is one of the most pressing human rights challenges facing Australia today.”

“That is a big concern,” says Long, “children of prisoners are six times more likely to end up in prison. Children should not be punished for the actions of their parents, they are innocent, they haven’t committed a crime.

“But they suffer family fragmentation, identity issues, financial distress, lack of money coming into the house, isolation. We see a lot of intergenerational offending and that is a cycle we want to break, we don’t want jail to become normalised for these kids.” These are kids, says Long, who might be stealing simply to feed themselves.

Being homeless is not a crime, so why are so many jailed? | Samantha Sowerwine Read more

Australia is a signatory to the United Nations rules for the treatment of women prisoners and non-custodial measures for women offenders, known as the Bangkok rules. But those who work with the judicial system say the rules where detention is a last resort are rarely implemented in Australia.

At the intersection between the criminal justice system and welfare, the criminal justice system always triumphs. Australian courts are geared for efficiency in dispensing justice. “The courts are about law” says Kilroy, “they are not about justice.”

Says Long: “What we would advocate for this country are non-custodial sentences for mothers where possible, except if there is gross violence, and taking into account the best interests of the children by ensuring appropriate provision is taken for the care of the children.”

Jeffries agrees, saying: “Prison should be the opportunity to help these women heal. We are not talking about vicious, dangerous killers who are a risk to society, they are just not a risk to society, they pose very little risk to the world.”

Dr Caroline Atkinson, a trauma consultant, says: “It would be much more sensible to divert them to really solid trauma-based programs rather than putting them in another system which is traumatising in itself.”

“Why,” Kymberley Ranganui asks, “can’t they send you to rehab centres for 12 months? Instead of being a victim all the time it would build their confidence up, give them self-esteem and coping mechanisms, important things for a parent to pass down to a child.

“We don’t need the system dragging us down any more, we are already down, you don’t need to kick us more.”