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KATE PARADINE
A farewell tribute to
Kate Paradine After nearly seven years as the CEO of Women in Prison (WIP), Kate Paradine is moving on to explore new challenges. Harriet Johnson, co-chair of WIP’s Board of Trustees and barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, pays tribute to Kate and her work at WIP.
K
ate joined WIP when budget and funding cuts were hitting the charity sector hard and austerity was having a severe impact not just on WIP, but on the women who WIP works with. Kate took on a big challenge and from her first day got straight to work. In 2017, Kate commissioned The Corston Report: Ten Years On exposing the shameful fact that ten years after Baroness Corston’s damning assessment of how the criminal justice system fails women, that very little had changed. Kate used this report as a platform to demand meaningful policy change from those in power. Kate also led the response to the sudden closure of Holloway prison in 2016 – a closure that saw many women moved to prisons miles away from their families
and support networks, which had a significant impact on their health and mental wellbeing. At the same time, women’s services working out of Holloway had to find new bases at incredibly short notice, leading to a huge rise in running costs. Suddenly, the women WIP was working to help were further away, and there was less money to help them. Through all of this, Kate managed not only to raise awareness of the unfairness that was being in icted on women, but also to manage WIP in a way that meant it could continue to provide the support its service users so desperately needed. Kate has been a regular on BBC Woman’s Hour, major news programmes, and in the print media, always fighting to achieve justice for women in prison and
