Let’s keep mothers out of Scotland’s prisons

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/28/women-prisons-alternatives

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More than 100 years have elapsed since Winston Churchill delivered some of the most compassionate words ever uttered by a senior politician in this country about our attitude towards prisoners.

In the midst of this quite profound entreaty, Churchill confessed to “an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if only you can find it, in the heart of every person”. These words ought to be branded on the brickwork of every prison and remand centre in Britain and the full text of his soliloquy should be distributed to each of our politicians whenever the issue of prison reform and how we treat offenders is debated.

Churchill was home secretary when he spoke those words in 1910 but, while almost every other speech he ever made afterwards has been venerated and acclaimed, this one has been quietly passed over. This is hardly surprising because it has provided a gold standard which our society has failed even to come close to reaching ever since. We still lock up too many of our fellow human beings and treat them like animals when we do, even as we wring our hands about rates of re-offending. We dehumanise some by calling them beasts and monsters and make it virtually impossible for others ever to contribute fully to the common weal.

At the merest hint or glimpse of any common humanity being shown them while inside, we turn into the National Rifle Association and scream about becoming a soft-touch society. We rarely consider the long-term damage to the country and cost to our public services of ensuring that offenders are even more screwed up and alienated when they emerge from their confinement than when they commenced it. Nor do we pause to ask why a grossly disproportionate percentage of the prison population comes from our most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Yet how could it be otherwise when a grossly disproportionate number of those whom we permit to send them to jail come from a life of gilded and unearned privilege and for whom “disadvantage” is not having a mother who was a maid of honour at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation?

In Scotland, we think we are that bit more enlightened and inclusive than our neighbours in England, but we’re not. In 1999, Jim Wallace, the then Scottish justice minister, chose to spend £13m of European money earmarked for ending slopping-out in prisons on “other priorities”. The bill to the taxpayer in subsequent compensation claims came to more than 10 times that figure. Last year, the SNP government voted not to permit some prisoners the right to vote in the independence referendum. This vindictive act went against the grain of liberalism which the SNP claims to possess, but resulted from a cowardly refusal to face down the hillbilly tendency in Scottish society.

Earlier this year, the Scottish government had to be dragged screaming to a decision not to go ahead with advanced plans for a large new women’s prison in Inverclyde. It was only the passionate campaigning of the influential Women for Independence group that forced the government’s hand. This was a milestone moment for Scotland because the issue of how many women are held in our prisons defines the character of our nation even more acutely than the general question of crime and punishment.

Two weeks ago, the Women for Independence group moved to condemn the number of women in prison and the conditions in which they are held. In a letter to Scotland’s recently appointed justice secretary, Michael Matheson, they urged him to “campaign for a commitment from all the parties standing in the next Scottish Parliament elections to reduce the number of women in prison in Scotland to a maximum of 100 [from 430] by the year 2020”. I wouldn’t hold my breath: two previous pledges to reduce the number of women in prison were quietly spiked.

There is an assortment of morally compelling reasons why we might be required to consider the issue of the imprisonment of women differently from that of male incarceration. The over-riding one is that the emotional, psychological and physical consequences that follow from jailing a woman can be far more distressing and far-reaching than from jailing a man.

These are manifest in the trauma of children separated from their mothers. It is also scarcely believable that some recent sentencing decisions by our judges have resulted in pregnant women being sent to jail or remanded in custody. In the last five years, 19 babies have been born to women in prison. This is behaviour from the dark ages.

That strangulated yelping you hear is the sound of the Jeremy Clarkson faction (and there’s a bit of him in all of us), protesting that all crimes deserve to be punished irrespective of the perpetrator’s gender. But that’s just bullshit. Consider this: only a small percentage of rapes against women are reported in this country, which means there are an awful lot of women among us, many also dealing with ongoing social challenges, who are damaged to an extent beyond the comprehension of men. How many of these poor souls will embark on a path that eventually leads to prison?

Consider this also: the children of men in jail still have mothers to care for them, but the children of women in custody often don’t have anyone. Many will be single parents who have encountered physical and psychological violence at the hands of the men – a significant factor in patterns of female offending.

Prison officers have reported that mothers spend most of their time inside trying to run families and households in a desperate bid to prevent their children from being taken into care. Often, they will experience a deep sense of guilt and helplessness at the suffering of their children. Some of us will insist that they should have contemplated this before they committed their misdemeanours. But only in very few cases will that amount of torment and its long-term consequences fit the crime.

Many of these women are mothers, sisters and daughters for whom violence, rejection and addiction has led to them taking a wrong turning in life. Surely there must be a corner of Scotland’s big heart that would grant them a refuge instead of an ambush?