ABSTRACT
Internationally, women represent a much smaller proportion of the offending population than men and have constituted a minority of the total prisoner population since the inception of the modern prison in the 19th century. Nevertheless, since the early 1990s women have formed a rapidly growing proportion of prisoners across Western democracies. Prisoner populations are generally more disadvantaged than the rest of the population, however research indicates that women in prison are markedly more disadvantaged than men. Women in prison are significantly more likely to have experienced sexual and physical abuse and violence, homelessness, poverty, drug and alcohol dependencies, mental health disorders and cognitive impairment. Although women’s prisons and specific psychological and other support services have grown since the early 1990s, the number of women in prison has continued to rise – in particular, women with multiple and complex support needs and from Indigenous and racialised backgrounds. Despite this, there remains scant evidence on vulnerable women’s distinct experiences of, and pathways into criminal justice systems. This chapter canvasses the available research on women in prison and the gendered penality that frames their experiences of the criminal justice system. It then reports on a cohort of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian women drawn from an administrative dataset of people who have been in prison and whose mental health and cognitive impairment diagnoses are known (Baldry, McCausland, Dowse & McEntyre, 2015). Based on the findings of this study and other evidence, in particular the Corston report in England and Wales, UK (Corston, 2007) we propose that more radical, holistic and trauma-informed approaches are required to better support women caught up in the criminal justice system and to address the social injustice of their rising rates of incarceration.
