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The mental health crisis in women’s prisons [1]
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Date: 2023-02
During her first 24 hours in HMP Styal in December 2020, Francesca Barker-Mills remembers looking for a way to kill herself.
“But I had no access to anything suitable,” she said. “My prison cell was in Covid isolation on the main wing. The wall next to my bed was speckled with blood.”
As her time in the Cheshire prison continued, she found that blood on walls wasn’t unusual. “Blood splatter was a common occurrence,” she said. “Self-inflicted or through violence among the women.”
Barker-Mills’ eight-month sentence stretched throughout the pandemic, and saw her held at both HMP Styal and HMP Askham in York. Lockdowns meant women were held in their cells for almost the entire day.
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“Hundreds of women were confined to their cells, segregated, alienated and isolated,” the 35-year-old told openDemocracy of her time at Styal. “All we were left with was time inside, with no mental health support. Staff shortages meant that even basic rights like fresh air were removed because no one could facilitate this.
“I spent my first two weeks in prison alone, with no pastoral support or engagement other than my door opening twice a day to slide a paper bag of food across the floor at a safe distance – like a colony of lepers.”
“Did I want to die?” she asked rhetorically. “Absolutely. It was desolate and without hope.”
‘Not safe spaces for women’
While the pandemic had a particularly detrimental effect on Barker-Mills’ detention, similar issues have recently been reported at other prisons.
Earlier this month, HMP Eastwood Park, a women’s prison in south Gloucestershire, was given the lowest grade for safety by the Inspectorate of Prisons. Some 83% of the women held at the prison at the time of inspection reported having mental health problems, while self-harm rates were 128% higher than at the last inspection in 2019.
The 70-page report raised particular issues with a dilapidated block that held women awaiting transfer to a secure mental health facility or who had been placed in segregation due to a breach, or suspected breach, of prison rules. One cell in the block had blood splattered on its walls and several had scratch marks – clear signs that women experienced distress and trauma while detained there.
Inspectors said inmates told them their poor mental health was the result of too much time locked in cells, a lack of purposeful activity, basic requests taking too long to resolve, insufficient support, and not enough contact with family and friends.
Other women who have been detained in English prisons told openDemocracy of witnessing high rates of both mental health issues and self-harm.
Adetola Adio Adeogun, who was held in London’s Holloway Prison for five months in 2015, described women smashing their heads against walls until blood flowed and cutting their skin open into crosses. The prison closed the following year after it was found to be “inadequate and unconducive to the rehabilitation of its residents”.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/women-prisons-crisis-mental-health-unsafe-mothers-children-england-wales/
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