Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The world of prisons
- 3 Prisons of the world
- 4 International Centre for Prison Studies
- 5 Women: the forgotten minority
- 6 The legacy of the Gulag
- 7 European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
- 8 Regional contrasts: Cambodia and Japan
- 9 Latin America: the iron fist or the New Model?
- 10 Barbados and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 11 Sub-Saharan Africa: an expensive colonial legacy
- 12 The Jericho Monitoring Mission
- 13 Towards ‘a better way’
- Notes
- References
- Index
5 - Women: the forgotten minority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The world of prisons
- 3 Prisons of the world
- 4 International Centre for Prison Studies
- 5 Women: the forgotten minority
- 6 The legacy of the Gulag
- 7 European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
- 8 Regional contrasts: Cambodia and Japan
- 9 Latin America: the iron fist or the New Model?
- 10 Barbados and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- 11 Sub-Saharan Africa: an expensive colonial legacy
- 12 The Jericho Monitoring Mission
- 13 Towards ‘a better way’
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Some 93 per cent of prisoners in the world are male, so it is not surprising that much of the narrative about prisons is male oriented. That is also the case with this book since the bulk of my experience has been in the male prison setting. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are over 700,000 women in prisons around the world. The journey which has taken them to prison will often be quite distinct from that of their male counterparts, and their experience of imprisonment will also be different, especially if they are the primary carers of small children or are pregnant when they are sent to prison. In a word, they are the forgotten minority who should be given a voice.
‘Ill-adapted correctional policies borrowed from models designed for men’
Ministers have rejected hospital proposals which would have ended the controversial practice of shackling pregnant women prisoners to prevent escapes
Secretly filmed footage, broadcast on Channel 4 last week, showed a Holloway prisoner, named only as Annette, shackled to warders only an hour after giving birth. Witnesses said she had been restrained when she was having contractions.
Anne Widdecombe, prisons minister, said it was not policy to restrain women during labour and claimed that in Annette's case, once full labour had been established, she had not been shackled.
‘The Prison Service has a duty of care to the mother, but this must be balanced against the needs of the service to keep all prisoners, including pregnant women prisoners, in secure custody,’ she said. (Mills, 1996)
In September 1994 and January 1995 two groups of high-security male prisoners escaped from two maximum security prisons in England. Following an inquiry into the operational lapses which had led to these escapes, new security procedures were introduced in all prisons in England and Wales. One of these was that all prisoners who were being escorted to a public hospital for any reason were to be handcuffed and chained at all times. This regulation was interpreted literally and it later transpired that pregnant women prisoners who were taken to hospital to give birth were being restrained in this way.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Prisons of the World , pp. 42 - 55Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021