Reports

Five years on from the Corston report and two years from the Bangkok Rules, Women in Prison’s flagship report “The State of the Estate” is the first of its kind and a unique piece of research. It provides accessible, like-for-like data on all 15 women’s prison in the UK and is intended to serve as a useful tool for researchers, policy makers and criminal justice practitioners alike. This first report will stand as a benchmark to measure future developments against.

The section titled “What the women say: A day in the life of a woman prisoner” is a collection of first-hand accounts from women across the prison estate. This section complements the statistical parts of the report and provides us with a human account of the day-to-day reality of life in prison today.

The report also looks at the UK female custodial estate from a human rights perspective. It provides the first evaluation of the UK Government's compliance with the UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (known as the Bangkok Rules). This section outlines and explains the Rules in terms of both theoretical policy and practical application while evaluating progress.

Another key part of the report is a “spotlight issue”. The focus we have chosen for the 2011-12 report is mental health - an issue that really goes to the core of questioning the extent of custodial sentencing for women with mental health issues.

This report contains the outcome of the Small Custodial Units Roundtable event held by Women in Prison in May 2012. For more information, please see the events section.

Hear and Now: Women in the criminal justice system making changes in their lives (2011)

Hear and Now brings together the independent evaluations of three of Women in Prison's projects, drawing out what can be learnt from these projects and other work undertaken by Women in Prison.

Corston Report 5 Years On: How far have the government got on the road to reform of the criminal justice system for women? (2012)

It is five years since the Corston report on vulnerable women in the criminal justice system was published. The report gained cross-party support and its recommendations have been broadly accepted by two governments. But what progress has been made? The 43 recommendations in the report provide a roadmap for women-specific criminal justice reform, this report gives an overview of where progress has been made and where it has stalled.

This document is configured to print as a booklet.