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Key points
- Many women in prison have a history of trauma and high rates of adverse childhood experiences .
- There are aspects of custody that trigger traumatic memories including flashbacks and other symptoms of PTSD.
- In these environments, self-harm may become an essential form of communication and a coping strategy.
- Prison environments need to become trauma-informed and focus on the mental states underlying behaviour.
“She’s just scared—cornered like that, of course, she reacted like a fox in a snare.” The music therapist described how a young female prisoner came into a session with bruises on her face. She had resisted the officer’s command to go ‘behind the door’, the instruction to end free movement and return to her cell, to be locked in. What followed was a scuffle with the staff, and eventually a forced return to her cell, where she banged her head hard against the wall.
The prisoner had no other way of expressing rage and frustration without incurring further punishment or physical restraint and so had turned this anger against herself. Rather than recognising her fear and frustration with returning to her cell, and the traumatic experiences that being locked in awakened, the officer saw simply a refusal to obey orders.
In prison, bodies tend to matter more than minds. Women’s bodies, especially those of the most challenging prisoners, need to be counted, controlled, and confined, located in one wing or another, moved to segregation, relocated to health care, and placed on the escape list, which means wearing brightly coloured clothes that mark them out as prisoners, or, in the worst case ghosted out to another prison.
A history of trauma
A significant proportion of women in prison have histories of trauma, and high levels of adverse childhood events (ACES), like household violence, physical or emotional parental abuse, and neglect. While women’s prisons in the US and UK are increasingly signing up to deliver trauma-informed care, along the lines of Stephanie Covington’s programs, as the primary focus of any such institution is still the safe containment of women who have committed crimes, the idea of rehabilitation and release often retreats into the background, especially at times of pressure. This is not because officers and managers of prisons don’t care about the welfare of prisoners or disbelieve in the goal of rehabilitation, but because the primary task and purpose of the prison is to house those considered dangerous to the public or deserving of punishment.
This focus on controlling women’s bodies, rather than understanding and healing their minds, often leads to destructive patterns of behaviour and spikes of antagonism, fear, and aggression in women who are incarcerated. They find it impossible to trust authority and daily interactions can trigger trauma responses. For some women, who enter prison for minor, non-violent offences, these battles for control, these interactions with authority figures who frighten them, lead to further infringements of the rules, and further crimes, committed inside the prison, that then prolong already hefty sentences. For some, serving long sentences, including life or indefinite sentences, like IPPs in the UK (indeterminate sentences for the protection of the public), these scenarios are almost daily occurrences, and each adjudication creates yet more hopelessness.
The fight-flight response that all humans display when faced with danger has particular salience in a prison, where the impact of having restrictions placed upon one, often physical, like having to be in a room and the door locked, having to line up for food and medication, and being wholly dependent on guards to allow you freedom of access, can lead, in turn to physical responses, including self-harm. Women in prison in the UK self-harm at over three times the rate than men do. The forms of self-harm are various, and creative, as the need to expel mental pain into physical pain is intense, and there are endless possibilities for finding the means to do so. Sheets, shoelaces, and pieces of elastic can be used to create ligatures, stones, and broken plastic or staples used to cut the skin and, if all else is taken away, head banging, self-starvation, or misuse of insulin or other medication can all be used to damage oneself.
A means of communication
Many people dismiss these acts of self-harm as manipulative or attention-seeking, but in closed institutions like prisons or secure clinics, self-harm is a means of communication, and sometimes the only way that women can express the pain they are in or release their sense of being overwhelmed by unbearable memories and thoughts. Women often locate their sense of identity in their bodies and have unique and sensitive needs, which prisons often regularly overlook. While many prisons are seeking to become trauma-informed, there are aspects of institutionalisation that inevitably re-create trauma.
Another point of tension for female prisoners is their children. While most women are serving short sentences of three months or less, being taken into custody means they can lose their accommodation, their jobs, and their children. Only 9 percent of fathers will retain custody of the children according to data, as a significant proportion of mothers in prison are the primary carers for them. Children are seen as hidden victims of maternal incarceration poverty. Use of custody for relatively minor offences and short sentences can lead to children being separated from their mothers.
In most cases, female violence is a manifestation of the specific and unique nature of women’s experiences, namely their exposure to more trauma throughout their lifespans and how this can shape their own relationship to their bodies. When such trauma is recreated in prison, through inhumane conditions, proximity to dangerous others, or exposure to unrelenting noise and indifferent staff, women may retaliate with their bodies to express protest, through violence towards themselves or others. These traumatic responses are understandable but can create cycles of despair and entrapment in the system.
The needs of women in prison are quite distinct from those of men. Female prisoners’ voices must be heard, and their stories told, in the hope of understanding. In If Love Could Kill: The Myths and Truths of Women who Commit Violence, I tell the stories of 11 women, and how their trauma histories are manifested in their crimes. Through psychotherapeutic work, it is possible to both reduce the risk of future offending and to help women retain hope and a sense of the future. When prisons become psychologically informed and engage with women’s minds, rather than simply confining and containing their bodies, true rehabilitation can begin.
References
Creating a Trauma-Informed Justice System for Women. S. Covington. Creating a Trauma-Informed Justice System for Women.
The Wiley Handbook on What Works with Girls and Women in Conflict with the Law: A Critical Review of Theory, Practice, and Policy. Edited by L. Gelsthorpe & S. Brown. United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, May 2022.
Jude Kelman, Rachael Gribble, Joel Harvey, Laura Palmer & Deirdre MacManus (2022) How Does a History of Trauma Affect the Experience of Imprisonment for Individuals in Women’s Prisons: A Qualitative Exploration, Women & Criminal Justice.
Ministry of Justice (2018). Female offender strategy.
Prison Reform Trust (2022) Why Focus on Reducing Women’s Imprisonment. London
