MOPAC, Probation Services and the Holloway Women’s Space: Short Report by Community Plan for Holloway

Full Report below

Introduction

“We have a golden opportunity to choose social justice, and the empowerment of communities so that the site is used to demonstrate what a different system could look like: Where communities hold the answer to issues faced by women with complex needs and those who offend – not prisons.” 1
After Holloway: Consultation with women affected by the criminal justice system

Community Plan for Holloway (CP4H) originally emerged from the work of the Centre for Crime and Criminal Justice Studies, and now exists to amplify the voices and views of local residents and women’s organisations, who want to see the best possible outcomes from this site which holds so much meaning for so many.

According to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies2, “most women in prison have experience of domestic or sexual violence, are battling addiction, serious mental ill-health or are homeless and living in poverty. A third of women in prison grew up in care.” However, women are disproportionately sentenced to custodial time. “In the UK there is a chronic overuse of imprisonment with 84% of women sentenced to prison for a non-violent crime on a short sentence, often for theft such as shoplifting. One in four

1 https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/after-holloway-consultation-women-affected-criminal-justi ce-system-0

women who are sentenced to prison are sentenced to one month or less.” These women already face huge barriers in their lives, and these are vastly increased by a prison sentence.

The dedicated women’s space on the site of the former Holloway Prison will be central to the site’s legacy for women, and the role that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and probation services will or will not have in the space will determine how this new space will function and the needs it will be able to meet.

Since 2016, the question of whether MOPAC and probation services are part of the women’s space, and how this could work for women, has been discussed by a huge range of organisations and women from different backgrounds and with different experiences, including many who were imprisoned in Holloway before it was closed. This report highlights issues raised at a recent meeting convened by CP4H to explore the views of organisations who had expressed an interest in the tender for Operator of the women’s space, as well as individuals and organisations who have a more general interest, and views were also sought well as by email and through one to one meetings.