For a long time, I thought one of my most radical beliefs, really quite edgy, was that women’s prisons should be abolished. As the years passed, it’s felt less and less radical, and today it’s increasingly clear this is not just necessary, but urgent.
Prisons are in a profound state of crisis – the prison population of England and Wales has doubled over the last 30 years, despite crime rates falling substantially, and the Prison Governors’ Association warned two weeks ago that prisons were just days away from running out of cells. Setting out plans to release 5,500 inmates early, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said Rishi Sunak was responsible for “the most disgraceful dereliction of duty” by failing to address the problem. According to the Mirror, one proposal put forward to the government to ease the pressure was to release enough female prisoners to free up an entire prison. And campaigners are saying, in a familiar tone of exhausted fury, why stop there?
