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WIP CAMPAIGNS
By Sorana Vieru, WIP’s Head of Campaigns and Public Affairs
# S to p T h e 5 0 0 Women in Prison (WIP) have been busy calling on the Government to reverse their plans to build 500 new prison places for women, which were announced in January 2021. We believe building more prisons will only shatter more lives and unnecessarily tear more families and communities apart. We know 9 in 10 children have to leave their home when their mother goes to prison, as women are often primary carers. The plans fly in the face of the Government’s own strategy, which commits to reducing the number of women in prison. There is another way. Local specialist services such as Women’s Centres, which you can read more about on pages 30-33, are already embedded in many communities across
the country, providing an anchor to stop women being swept up into crime. The Government can choose to invest in these and fulfil their commitment to reduce the number of women in prison, rather than go against it by building more prison places. In July 2021, we co-ordinated a joint letter to the Secretary of State for Justice signed by over 70 organisations spanning the housing, domestic abuse, criminal justice, midwifery, mental health, and children’s sectors to make the case for community solutions instead. We are continuing to campaign to make sure our voices are heard by the Government and fighting for investment in community-based services that support women to tackle the root causes of being drawn into the criminal justice system in the first place, like domestic abuse and poverty.
