Women with convictions: transforming justice from the ground up
Dr Ian Mahoney, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University
This post is part of a series from the Understanding Communities programme of six research projects, supported by the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation.
Women with convictions account for 14 per cent of deaths during post-release supervision, 35 per cent of which are self-inflicted despite making up less than five per cent of the prison population. This highlights the extent of women with convictions’ marginalisation, the complexity of their needs, and the urgency with which their (re)integration and (re)engagement within communities must be addressed. Women with convictions’ stories and experiences of discrimination and marginalisation are often intersectional, shaped by race, gender and social class in particular.
Family and friends provide crucial (re)integration and (re)settlement support for women with convictions and community responses have been identified as most effective in addressing the causes of female offending. However, many communities lack meaningful support for women with convictions, particularly those at risk of homelessness, who are particularly vulnerable upon release from prison.
Transformative Justice
We — a multi-institutional research team led by London South Bank University — are exploring the potential of a Transformative Justice approach for reintegrating women with convictions into their communities in Stoke-on-Trent. Transformative Justice theory:
· is built on the premise that top-down and state-led responses to violence can reproduce and compound harm;
· focuses on overcoming ingrained social and structural barriers to engagement and justice issues;
· cultivates accountability, healing, resilience, and safety by transforming the conditions that enable harm;
· develops community accountability and engagement to challenge unequal and intersecting power relationships.
(see work by Gready and Robins and Transform Harm).
We acknowledge the harms that can be caused by exposure to our criminal justice system. These can be experienced by victims, for example, through carrying their trauma with them; and secondary victimisation by having to relive traumatic events through the investigation, trial and sentencing processes. They can also be experienced by perpetrators of offences through impacts on their health, education, housing, employment, relationships, and any trauma which they may carry themselves.
New research
Transformative Justice principles have shaped the development of our project from the outset and fieldwork is now underway, including:
· Interviews with Transformative Justice practitioners, experts and activists to better understand the processes, benefits and challenges they have identified;
· Focus groups with women with convictions and community members to explore their experiences;
· Community arts-based workshops intended to develop a self-sustaining network which can in turn provide support for women with convictions in the community (who will later be integrated into the group);
· Quality of life surveys exploring the broader social value of the project.
Our collective aspiration is to explore challenging topics carefully, respectfully and collaboratively, as we develop as a network capable of providing and sustaining support for women with convictions living in the community. We aim to create a safe and supportive space for women with convictions and community members to come together, away from the harmful aspects of existing state practices and interventions, as part of the healing and accountability process.
We are fortunate to be supported by an experienced advisory group and a range of community partners with expertise in creative arts and co-production, including Restoke Clean Break and Rideout. They are central to our successful application of these approaches. and have been instrumental in facilitating community workshops in which a strong core group of participants has begun to emerge. These participants represent a cross section of experiences through working in childcare, education, healthcare, homelessness, the justice system and many other fields.
Key themes around the development of a shared understanding of what justice means to the group and the conditions that are needed for this to be met have been explored. Time, patience and common values centred around respect for the views and experiences of others are crucial. We have explored considerations in the group about what ‘justice’ and consequence means to each participant extensively, and the role that we can all play in considering what sort of society we wish to live in. This is important given the need for community accountability and acceptance that we cannot rely solely on state agencies and other actors, including teachers and social workers, if we wish to see local engagement with the reframing of justice.
Elsewhere time has been recognised as important for change among those developing non-offending identities and pathways, but we have found that it is vital when exploring processes of change in communities to make space for those looking to (re)integrate into them. This is particularly so where projects frequently rely upon volunteers and activists to sustain them. These themes will continue to be explored as the project continues.
We are at a key juncture where we pause for thought, analysis and reflection on the processes and experiences that members of our network have shared so far. During this time our participants have been working to develop a collective group identity and showcasing some of the work and discussions so far online and offline. In phase two, we will centre the lived experience of women with convictions in the group. Here we will continue to carefully support the group with our experienced facilitators and trauma and experienced safeguarding-informed practitioners. This will enable us to further identify ways of better supporting (re)integration into wider community spaces and structures.
Informing policy and practice
One of our goals is to develop a knowledge base that demonstrates to policymakers that allocating resources to community networks can be effective in reducing crime and increasing social cohesion. In line with broader Transformative Justice principles, our driving imperative is to evidence the potential of communities, community leaders, activists and other interested local parties as a valid alternative to the instruments of punishment and justice traditionally used by the state (for example, the police, prisons and probation), which are known to disproportionately criminalise marginalised people.
Informed by our early findings, we advocate for the meaningful and effective resourcing of community-based, locally rooted interventions. This requires support and recognition for local groups and activists working in their communities from external bodies, including local and national government, and a move towards the embedding of empathic, socially just principles across all levels of society. Pursuing this goal whilst centring the values of Transformative Justice remains a central focus as the project develops and progresses.
Find out more
If, like us, you are interested in creatively exploring alternative approaches to justice and want to find out more about how we are exploring the role of communities in developing networks of collective action, keep an eye out for updates here and check out the Hopeful Justice Collective webpage. You can contact Tirion Havard, the Principal Investigator, at havardt@lsbu.ac.uk.
References
Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins’, Stanford Law Review, 43, pp. 1241–1299. doi: 10.2307/1229039.
Corston, J. (2007) The Corston Report: a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system. London: Home Office available via https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20130206102659/http:/www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/corston-report-march-2007.pdf
Gready, P. and Robins, S. (2019) From Transitional to Transformative Justice in P. Gready and S. Robins (eds) From Transitional to Transformative Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University. Pp.31–56
Hall, L. J., Best, D., Ogden-Webb, C., Dixon, J., and Heslop, R. (2018) Building bridges to the community: the Kirkham Family Connectors (KFC) Prison Programme. Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 57(4), 518–536. https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12289
Henley, A.J., 2018. Mind the gap: sentencing, rehabilitation and civic purgatory Probation Journal. 63(3), 285–301
HM Inspectorate of Probation (2021) Race equality in probation: The experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic probation service users and staff. Manchester: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation
Home Office (2020) Women and the Criminal Justice System 2019 available via https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2019/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2019#offender-characteristics-1
Mahoney, I, and Chowdhury, R. (2021) Criminal Justice and Inequality: What can be done to reduce reoffending? Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University
McNeill, F., Crockett Thomas, P., Cathcart-Froden, L., Collinson Scott, J., Escobar, O., and Urie, A (2022) Time After Time: Imprisonment, Re-entry and Enduring Temporariness in Carr, N. and Robinson, G. (Eds) Time and Punishment, London: Palgrave
Ministry of Justice (2022) Deaths of offenders in the community: Annual update to March 2022 available at Deaths of offenders supervised in the community statistics (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Ministry of Justice (2018) Female Offender Strategy available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/female-offender-strategy
Staffordshire PFCC (2015) Staffordshire Strategic Framework for Reducing Reoffending 2015–2018, available at https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fstaffordshire-pfcc.gov.uk%2Fcms%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FOffending-Strategy-v2-1.docx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
Stoke-on-Trent City Council (2020) Community Safety Strategy 2020–2023 available at https://www.stoke.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/835/safer_city_partnership_strategy_2017_to_2020.pdf
Transform Harm (2018) Transformative Justice: A brief description available at https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/
