Sally: Hi. I am really pleased to be joined today on our podcast where we're talking about women and prisons, and the alternative to prisons, by two brilliant women. My name's Sally Jackson and I'm a Trustee and volunteer at FiLiA and I'm joined by Dr. April Smith, who's a senior lecturer in criminology and psychology at the University of Portsmouth at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies. She got attention because she recently wrote an excellent piece called Prison is a Disaster for Women: Here's what would work instead. We saw that in the conversation last month and wanted to speak to April a bit more about that. Also joining us is Rhona Hotchkiss, who is a former Governor of Scotland's only women's prison, Cornton Vale, which is in Stirling. She is also director at Beira's Place, the sexual violence support service for women, a friend of FiLiA, a speaker last year in Glasgow, women's rights activist and what we would call an all round Scottish legend. So welcome to you both. It's lovely to be speaking to you. I suppose starting with a really obvious question, how many women are there in prison and, what are the sorts of crimes that they're in prison for? April, would you like to start with that and then we'll come to you Rhona?

April: There are 12 prisons, or women's prisons, in England and Wales, and they consistently make up around four percent of the prison population, so we're looking at around 3,600 women in prison. We still have one of the highest rates of women's imprisonment in Western Europe, and we're almost twice as high as Germany. I would say that there has been a welcome reduction in the use of imprisonment for women, so over the last 10 years, we've dropped around 44% and we can surmise that this is because of changing attitudes towards female imprisonment. In terms of the types of crimes that the women are in prison for, often I would say that women have been victims of far more serious crimes than what they're in prison for. Six in ten women are sentenced to six months or less. That's suggesting that these aren't particularly severe crimes. Most of the women are in there for non-violent offences, theft from a shop is the most frequent offence that women commit and that accounts for more than a third of women in prison. Also drug offences are quite common.

Sally: Does that sound similar to what you see in Scotland right now?

Rhona: Yes, some differences. The short answer to how many women are in prison is - far too many. As April said, we've got one of the highest imprisonment rates, certainly in Northern Europe. Former Soviet and Yugoslav states are different. England has always had slightly more per capita than Scotland, but I think we don't even have to look as far as Germany, as April will know. Northern Ireland, for example, imprisons fifty percent of the women per capita that England, Wales and Scotland do in three separate prison systems. If you go to the Republic of Ireland, it's even fewer than that. My comment on that is, I don't believe that the women of Scotland, England and Wales are any more inherently criminal than are their sisters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I agree with April about the types of offences that women are in prison for. In Scotland we have had a presumption for quite a while against sentences of less than six months. That presumption has now gone up to sentences of less than twelve months, but sadly it hasn't really impacted on the prison population. What you get is an up tariffing. So the courts tend to send women (or people, men as well, we've imprisoned far too many men) to prison for longer and also, it's only a presumption, they can still send people to prison for a short term sentence. But yes, I think it's a grim picture across mainland UK. Northern Ireland is doing well and the Republic of Ireland, separate to the UK I know, is also doing very well. I think there are plenty of lessons close to home that we could learn from.

Sally: It's interesting what you mentioned there about the amount of shorter sentences that reflects perhaps a less serious crime. What would be some of the things that we see might be in common behind that offending behaviour within the women's population?

Rhona: I'll maybe address that first. We should also address the issue of remand, and I know April will agree with this, because about 35 percent of all women in prison at any one time will be there on remand. The reasons for that, and this goes to answering your question as well Sally, a lot of women who come into prison have extremely chaotic lifestyles and when they come in front of the courts, the courts have no confidence that all the necessary reports and so on will be able to be done properly in the community, but it's not a good enough reason to deprive people of their liberty. Also, given that only about 30 percent of women on remand will go on to receive custodial sentences, it's actually a complete injustice to put them in prison especially for periods of six, seven, eight months. It's just not fair. Also with regard to chaotic lifestyles, a lot of women are in horrendous situations in the community: they live in situations of multiple trauma, they're living with domestic violence, coercive control. All of these things drive offending. The biggest predictor for offending is poverty, there's no absolute link so not all poor people commit crimes and a lot of rich people commit crimes as well, but there is a causal link there. Generally it’s poor women, women living in chaos because of drug or alcohol issues, or women having to resort to prostitution and being pimped out by men. It's all of these things. I don't know if April wants to add anything to that.

April: Yes, like Rhona says, there are several factors and many of these factors interrelate as well. Definitely poverty, which aligns also to what I said about theft also being the most common crime that women are in prison for. These are survival based crimes. That's related to poverty and that lack of financial independence, trauma and abuse histories. Over half of women in prison have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault. This means that they're more likely to develop the risk factors for offending. It might be that there are emotional and behavioural issues, so we see low self esteem, difficulties in forming healthy relationships, increased risk of mental health issues. I think the most recent statistic I saw was that 82 percent of women in prison have or had mental health issues. Also substance abuse which can lead to risky behaviours and then to committing crime to fund an addiction. Interestingly as well, I think if we look at it from a developmental perspective, I think women are inherently relational, and around half of women have committed crime to support someone else's drug use. As Rhona mentioned, there is the role of coercion as well.

Women are sometimes being forced into criminal activities by abusive partners. I also think it's important not to look at women necessarily under one monolith because linking to coercion as well, foreign nationals represent approximately eleven percent of female prisoners and many of these have been known to be coerced or trafficked into offending. Of course all of these issues that we've mentioned are exacerbated for women that are from ethnic minority groups who are also overrepresented in prison.

Rhona: I would like to add to that. Women from ethnic minority groups are not overrepresented in Scotland, but then we have a much lower mixture or a much lower non-white population anyway. There are two interesting things that people sometimes don't think about. First is that the level of acquired brain injury in women in prison is way higher than it is in the community. These are mostly women who've suffered abuse at the hands of men - their fathers, their brothers, their partners - and that in itself makes someone more likely to get into the kind of chaotic lifestyles that result in crime. The other interesting statistic is, and April's quite right in this, about 75 percent of women in custody have contact with NHS mental health services (these services are not contracted out in Scotland, they are run by the NHS) but only 25 percent of those women will have had contact in the community. This is one of the potential benefits I'm going to talk about, being in contact with custodial or other sentences. Women are sadly far more likely to have their health and mental health needs addressed in prison. If we're going to talk about alternatives, we have to talk about alternatives that have a way of addressing those things because clearly there's a huge unmet need among women and that is driving some of them into offending and into prison.

Sally: A huge amount of system failure you've both spoken about there, the issues around healthcare, poverty etcetera. We're in essence setting so many women up to fail and then blaming them for failing and not just blaming them, but punishing them for doing that. But as you say, Rhona, for some women, as bizarre as it may seem, this might actually be an opportunity to access some of the support that they need. Does prison work for women? If it does, what do we actually mean by that? What is success?

April: I completely agree with Rhona, and research has supported this. It was something that I found when I was doing my PhD research in a women's prison in England. It's sad that this is the case, but because of those chaotic lifestyles, prison does serve this protective function. Women talk about it being like a refuge from the external world. I think that this is to do with the structure that prison provides. It often is the first time when women are actually engaging with rehabilitative programs and getting support for substance misuse issues. I think the issue then tends to be when they are then released back into the same environment. That's not sustainable for this behavioural change so there's this inherent fragility. The focus needs to be more like through the gate care to support women back into the community, but in terms of whether it works, I think that's highly debatable. I think that we could define success through reoffending rates. The issue we have is that prisons often fail to address the root cause of offending behaviour so I'm not sure to what extent you can do this on such short sentences. As I mentioned, it's about supporting women's reintegration, and of course, if we look at reoffending rates, they're around 70 percent in England and Wales for those on these short sentences.

Rhona: Yes, like you April, though not at PhD level, my thesis for my master’s in law was on the cost and effectiveness of alternatives to custody for women in Scotland. I turned up what I thought were some quite interesting statistics there. When we talk about the alternative, it's not good enough to compare alternatives to custody to custody itself, because they're different beasts completely. For example, most of the alternatives to custody will not deal with serious offenders, some of them also exclude women with severe mental health issues, psychosis, at risk of severe self harm, chaotic drug use. The alternatives to custody deal with a slightly different group, like a subgroup of who comes into prison. I looked in detail at the one residential service there was in the community for women in Scotland who were referred by the courts. This is a quote from them. “We accept that sometimes people might have to be here five or six times. But there comes a point when the centre is obviously not the place or that that woman isn't ready.” I don't think they were making, or could make, huge claims about community being better than custody in terms of recidivism, but I absolutely agree with you that lots of women appear to turn their lives around in custody and it all falls apart again. Why wouldn't it? They're going back into poverty. They're going back into an unsecured tenancy. They're going back into the chaos where, if they had them, 50 percent of women who have children have already lost custody of them. They're going back to abusive partners. They're going back to their pushers, their pimps, the whole thing. It's difficult to see how it could be any different, because even with really good through care services, you can't take a woman out of her environment. The question I ask people is, would you move away from everything you know? Would you? I know I wouldn't. I wouldn't move away from my mum, my sisters, the people that do support me. It's asking a hell of a lot of people to come out of prison and live a different life. Now, it's to their credit that some do, but I mean, women trying to do that have my eternal sympathy. It must be the hardest thing in the world.

Sally: Absolutely. You mentioned there might be difficulties in their home environment, but equally there will be support systems that are loved and effective in different ways. Of course part and parcel of that as well, is that a significant proportion of the women that will be in the custodial estate will be mothers, and the effect that that has on them as mothers, not having their children, but also on their children not having their mothers.

Rhona: Yes, that's right. There's been quite a lot of work done into the impact on children of having parents in prison. The Children's Commissioner for Scotland did a significant piece of work a few years ago looking at that.

Interestingly, there seems to be a qualitative difference in the experiences of the children of men who go into prison and the children of women who go into prison. Lots of women coming into custody have already lost their children, whether due to previous custodial offence sentences or due to them not being able to provide a reasonable environment for their children. But for children of men coming into prison, quite a significant number of them talk about the relief of their dad not being there because of the violence and the chaos and the abuse of their mum and all that kind of thing. Whereas with women going into prison, there's far less of that. This is an overgeneralisation, but the children miss their mums and the attachment to their mother, as you would probably expect, is a lot stronger, especially for young children. It's a terrible trauma for women and for children to lose that close contact for children with their mums.

 April: Women are far more likely to be the primary caregivers for children and research consistently shows that parental imprisonment is a very strong risk factor, for a range of adverse outcomes for children. We see heightened antisocial behaviour, offending, mental health problems, drug abuse, school failure, unemployment. The impact can be devastating for the children and for the women as well. Two thirds of the women going into prison have children under the age of 18 when they receive a custodial sentence. But there's also on top of this women who are pregnant going into prison. So between 2021-22, there were 50 babies born to women in custody.

Sally: Just going back to how we started, the impact and the damage that is caused, particularly when we're talking about the majority of those women being on short sentences and the crimes that they have committed. We're not talking about serious, dangerous individuals where there's a safety risk. The crime could have been a theft to survive. The secondary impact on the family is the fact that mum's taken away and the kids are having to maybe go into care, maybe to family members, and all that disruption in their family.

Rhona: I think I said already about Scotland having a presumption of sentences of less than 12 months, and I think England has to introduce that really quickly, but Scotland has to get even tougher and say it makes absolutely no sense.

There is a strong case to be made because if someone is sentenced to less than 12 months, it's automatic halftime remission. If you send someone to prison for six months they will be out after three months. That's 12 weeks. What on earth are you supposed to do with someone in 12 weeks? What real risk can they be to society if they only need to be away for 12 weeks? I think we just have to end short sentences. The difficulty, of course, is there would have to be parallel funding for at least five years because you can't make conditions in prison worse just to fund community alternatives. And I think we might be going to go on and talk about what hope is there under the new government in Westminster. I don't have a lot of hope and I know they've appointed James Timpson. I'm sure he'll come in with some good ideas, but there is no money. Putting more money into prisons and criminal justice, unless it's locking people up, is not something that interests the public. So I don't have a lot of hope that things will get better in the short to medium term. As I say, we spend billions on criminal justice and imprisonment every year, and we would have to parallel that in the community to develop those services before we can run down prison places. I don't know if April agrees with that rather pessimistic viewpoint.

April: Yes, I do agree and I would say that's the biggest challenge. I actually think that the biggest challenge is less ideological at this stage. I think there is a growing recognition and an awareness of the importance of being gender responsive in terms of how we're working and dealing with women within criminal justice. But yes, I think the biggest challenge is the funding and the investment going into these alternatives.

Sally: It's interesting, isn't it? Because with the Corston report, which I'm trying to think how many years ago that was now, the majority of the recommendations from that were accepted. So ideologically, that seems like a good idea. Yes, let's do that. But what change have we seen since then? What are the tangible differences that we've seen since that report was published?

April: The Corston report really was quite a significant milestone in recognising the unique needs of women in the criminal justice system, certainly at a policy level. And the reason that report was commissioned was there had been six deaths in custody between 2002-03 at HMP Style. So the Corston report was published in 2007 and it made 43 recommendations to improve conditions for women in prison, for example it recommended only using prison for the most serious offences, making sure that women had access to health support services. As you've mentioned, the government accepted 41 out of the 43, and there have been some improvements. As I said, this increased awareness of the need for gender specific approaches, and the number of women's centres has modestly increased and it has filtered throughout more recent policy. Recent government reports have emphasised the importance of trauma informed care and working with women in prison, but I think that the progress has just been so slow and a lot of the recommendations have not been fully realised. Again, I think this goes back to the investment and the funding.

Rhona: I'd agree with that, April. While I was Governor of Cornton Vale, I was also responsible for the redesign of the women's prison estate in Scotland. There is only one prison that only holds women, but another three prisons that hold women in majority male prisons, there are four places. We designed a new main prison, for much fewer numbers and we designed it in a trauma informed way.

We looked at trauma informed buildings, we looked at the best that was available in mental health services, and it led to some radically different designs. There were no bars on the windows in the new prisons, every woman had a view to the outside that was green. The outside spaces were green, open and pleasant. Some of the work we did with women in preparation for that was really interesting. The women almost universally told us that from their room they wanted to be able to see staff. So we designed it so that women could see staff, but no women could see each other. You know, it was all that kind of stuff. When I was in charge of it, I was determined that no women with mental health issues would ever be sent to a segregation unit. We designed it differently so that the area where you would hold women who are presenting a security threat or a risk to others would only be separated from everyone else by a glass divider. It's things like the colors and the furnishings. We had completely ligature free cells. There is a lot of work going on. I think probably the new HMP Stirling is probably a model now for how women's prisons should look.

Our buildings were also, apart from the assessment, single storey. So it can be done, and the two new community custody units in Scotland followed that through. It was my dream that those units would allow women the opportunity to have their children in for the weekend and that part of their rehabilitation would be taking their children to school and taking their children to GP appointments and so on. I think that has stalled a little bit, but I think you're right April, we know what we need to know to get this right. It's just putting it right. Many of the women's prisons, particularly in England, are just beyond the pale when it comes to the conditions and now the overcrowding. It's really difficult to do significantly good work when you're short staffed, with under trained staff sometimes, and you're overcrowded. So you're right, we know what we need to know, it's now putting that knowledge into action that's the big challenge.

Sally: And as you mentioned April, the most tangible difference since Corston Report is women's centres and the fact that they are spreading and being used much more often. Can you talk to us a little bit about what a women's centre can offer, what happens there and the difference that they can make.

April: I think that whilst there are certainly some good practice examples of prisons being trauma informed, the slight difference perhaps with women's centres is that at their very core they are gender informed and trauma responsive. They're able to provide support that is especially tailored to the needs of women. These core principles are often strength based and empowering. It was interesting because a few years after the Corston report, the government did a report and they said that not enough progress had been made in developing a distinct approach to the treatment of women. Prisons were criticised for removing responsibility to such an extent that women were infantilised and they directly contrasted this with women's centers, which argued sought to empower women to take control of their lives. Also women's centers are focused on addressing the root cause of offending. rather than simply punishing behaviour. There has been some research that has looked at the outcomes of women's centers, and they found that it is effective at reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. There are some studies comparing women that are in women's centers compared to those in prison and it's found that there's been a greater reduction in reoffending. As Rhona's mentioned, because it's a slightly different subsection of the prison population, it is hard to offer those direct comparisons.

Rhona: Yeah, I think the big challenge for women's centres is that if there's no element of compulsion, people will walk away. Not all of them, but I looked at some research into the 15 women's community justice services in Scotland in about the mid-20s, about 2015, it found that something like 60 plus percent of women either never attended, or attended once, or left before the planned course of action. Again, that goes to the chaos of women's lives. When you think about the fact that only 17 percent of women coming into custody have a stable tenancy in the community, then unless we go right back and look at introducing a housing first model, introducing universal basic income. All of these things would also be needed. I'm sure you agree with me that there are the three stages, the basics of a decent life, and then there's addressing issues when they go wrong, and the very last resort should be custody and that only for people who present an active risk to the safety of people in the community. If we miss out any one of those steps, we don't have a proper response system in place and we're just going to perpetuate the issues. You referred earlier to the problems that are seen and the issues and the inherited issues that are seen in the children of women who end up in prison. Of course, some of the issues are nothing to do with their mothers going to prison, they are direct results of this intergenerational poverty and the lack of aspiration and ambition, and quite often the lack of being able to imagine a different life for themselves. That is visited on the children as well and we are perpetuating this cycle of deprivation. You have met women as well, and you know they are the children of women who lived in as dire circumstances as they do themselves. You can see it happening in their own children. It's absolutely heartbreaking to watch and to realise that if society doesn't intervene in a meaningful way, it's never going to stop. Sorry, I'm being a bit of a pessimist, I'm missing the gas this morning, but that's the reality.

Sally: You mentioned just now, Rhona, about new government, perhaps new approaches. I think there was some optimism with James Timpson coming up with some innovative ideas, maybe, or at least backing some of the other approaches that have been mentioned so far. I suppose, for me, one of the things I'm really aware of is that women are never the priority. You look at women that have additional issues that they're battling against, not the ‘good women’, the women that do have alcohol substance issues that have got previous offending behaviour, those who maybe have had children taken away. How do we get them to be a priority for government to look at and to start doing these things that as you say, we kind of know what we need to do, we just need the resources to be able to do it.

Rhona: It's difficult, isn't it? It's easy to pick off the ones that are likely to respond, the ones who don't have the complex issues, because they do make your figures look good, you know what I mean? They are the ones that get held up as this marvellous example of someone who turned their lives around. But there are always the poor five times as many women underneath who never get to. It is a structural issue in society. It's certainly not an individual problem and we must always resist any attempt to blame individuals for their situation and I don't, but that doesn't negate choice when it comes to serious crime, of course, because that's what we hear from men in court all the time, isn't it? “She made me do it … he made me do it.” I don't mean that at all, but if we never recognise the structural issues, we'll never change. As well as women's justice centre's, we also need a lot more money put into proper drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Certainly in Scotland, and it's probably the same in England, we have very few comprehensive residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs left. These are an absolute must because drugs, alcohol, prostitution, poverty are the four big drivers of women coming into prison. I would say poverty underpins all of them because there are probably as many people, wealthier people, who have drug issues but because they have money, it doesn't lead to the same outcomes for them. I think poverty underpins it all and unless you have a government that's recognizing that they're trying to get to this, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, this underclass we have in society where people are simply cast aside because they're too difficult to deal with, if we never make those people our priority, we'll never change this.

April: I think it's definitely difficult to predict with certainty to what extent the treatment of women is going to be seen as a priority for the new government.

Certainly, the prisons crisis is a priority for the new government, particularly overcrowding. I think the appointment of James Timpson is encouraging, given that he is a notable advocate of prison reform and reducing the use of imprisonment. He's talked about a culture of being addicted to punishment and directly stated that prison is a disaster for women. I think that public awareness of the issues is growing and there's increased recognition of that, but it's just going back to the resources as Rhona said.

Rhona: I think the challenge for this government will be to not slip into populism when it comes to looking at offenders. The last time we were talking about prisons not being able to cope and record highs was when Tony Blair was demitting office, because you might remember April, you might not be old enough to remember this first hand, but his mantra was ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,’ and he was pretty tough on crime. He wasn't so great on the causes of crime, much as he tried, but working within a restricted budget. So I think we have to welcome Labour's initial thoughts on crime and cutting imprisonment, but we have to be on their case every step of the way, or they'll just fall back into populism. Look at what's happened in relation to the riots, now that sort of race type riots are utterly abhorrent, and the people who were committing attempted murder deserve to be in prison. But honest to God, putting a 14 year old boy in an adult court and trying him for his part in it, what the hell's that all about? Sorry about that, but it says to me that Labour will still go in for knee jerk reactions, if they think it's what people are crying out for. We need level headedness, we need evidence, we need the work that April has done.

We need, probably, the stuff that I've done in relation to what actually works and so on. That's what we should be calling for. I know it's really difficult in the face of the riots, all decent people wanted to see something done about these thugs, but some of the prison sentences that have been handed out compared to sentences for Possessing child porn, child abuse and child sexual abuse are absolutely ridiculous. That's the kind of thing that worries me, that we'll get those knee jerk reactions happening.

Sally: You know, in my power as FiLiA Volunteer, I'm going to make you both leaders of the justice system in the UK. What would our gold standard look like for women, with you two in charge?

Rhona: My first thing would be to set some targets and objectives with a stepwise plan to meet them. Let's aim to have the imprisonment rate of the Republic of Ireland, especially for women but for men as well. Let's aim to do that. Let's look at how they managed to do it. Let's do something about remand and let's end short term sentences. No ifs, no buts. They're over. Nobody goes to prison for under six months, which means no sentences of less than a year. That would be the three things I would do, along with there being parallel investment in community services. That would be my thing.

April: I would agree with that. Definitely only use imprisonment as a last resort for the serious offences, if there is a public safety risk. I would describe the principles of a gold standard service being holistic, being trauma informed, and for the majority of women being community based. It would focus on those underlying causes of offending, prioritizing maintaining family ties, particularly with children, and and all in an effort with the goal of reducing reoffending which will serve those that offend but also victims and society at large as well.

Sally: Thank you. That certainly sounds like a much better system, not just for women but for society. I'm just thinking of our listeners and if they're interested in this issue, what can we, as women, do that would help to support us in getting that way of working across the UK?

Rhona: I would say inform yourself about the facts, make everything you see evidence based. For example really good alternatives to prison, especially if it involves a residential component, aren't actually cheaper, and they may not cut reoffending in the short term. As we have heard, sometimes people have to access the services five or six times. But what we have to bear in mind is that the deprivation of liberty is the severest thing a society can do to its citizens. So even if they're not cheaper and they're perhaps not better in the short term, it is still preferable for me not to send people to prison. I think we have to keep campaigning on that basis. There are some very obvious areas in which we can campaign, and if you look at the Centre for Women's Justice, they're very good on this. Things like retaliatory violence in situations of domestic violence, domestic coercive control, I think we have to get on every single case of those. I think we need to be really encouraging if the Westminster government, Scottish government takes even baby steps towards improving things. Praise the difference in prisons like Cornton Vale and the community units, the women's justice centres in England. Praise what they do without trashing prisons because I don't think it does any good to demoralise the thousands of staff who work there. Some of them, even most of them, do a good job and there is some good work. Keep a realistic view on what works and what doesn't work, on what's desirable, but underpin it all with the belief that prison and deprivation of liberty is the most appalling thing we can do to people and we should avoid it at all costs.

April: I would agree with that. Certainly at an individual level individuals can support local women's centres, whether that's volunteering or donating to them, to make a difference at that level. But as Rhona said, it's having that heightened or increasing awareness and education so that people are informed of the issues and I would say at a research level too. More research does need to be done, particularly with women's centres, to highlight the value of them and the financial benefits of these alternatives as well.

Rhona: Can I add one thing, Sally, that might be a practical thing that people can do? When I was the Governor of Greenock Prison, which is a mixed prison, we had a women's unit there. We started a clothes library for people in prison.

They didn't just borrow stuff, they came and took it. As well as putting some money in from the prison budget, people donated things for women in prison. Because one of the saddest things is that when women go to prison, they don't get nearly as much support as men. You know, men are usually cutting about in the most expensive train and all the rest of it, and women are often left to fend for themselves when they go to prison. A very practical thing you can do is to arrange donations of clothing. Check what your nearest women's prison is and ask them if this would be useful. Unfortunately what you sometimes get, God bless them, is church women's groups donating things, but they're all for women in their 60s and 70s. It needs to be for women in prison who can wear their own clothes most of the time. So you're talking about donating t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans and trainers and all the rest of it. That's a very practical thing you might want to encourage people to do and it makes a big difference. It means that women in prison don't feel they're forgotten. There are also volunteer visitor schemes for women who don't get visitors. Men's visit sessions are packed with their mums and their partners, Sometimes women in prison get no one. You don't have to know what the woman has done, and they can be women who are in for life sentences. I think we owe it to women to support them in that practical way. So two things you can do, contact your local prison and ask if it would be useful to donate and find out about visit schemes.

Sally: Brilliant. Thank you both so much. It's been really interesting chatting to you and I'm sure these conversations are going to go on and on as we hopefully start to see things improve. But thank you both for today, but also just for the work you do to help women.