Breaking down the barriers for women prisoners

WOMEN prisoners are one of the latest areas of investigation for Murdoch’s Centre for Social Change and Social Equity (SCASE).

SCASE has teamed up with the Uniting Church and Ruah Community Services to examine the relationships of women prisoners with their families.

About 60 per cent of women prisoners are primary carers of children or elderly relatives and we are interested in seeing what happens to these relationships, said Associate Professor Trish Harris, Principal Investigator on the project.

When men are in prison, their main concern is when they are getting out. Ask a woman prisoner what worries her, and she’ll say her children.

Professor Harris said SCASE researcher Dr Dorothy Goulding, who recently completed her PhD on the effects of long-term imprisonment, had begun coordinating interviews of women in prison and after their release, as well as gaining permission to talk to family members.

Dorothy is planning to actively engage the prison support group at Bandyup as we want women prisoners to have input into designing the questionnaire from the outset, as they, better than anyone else, know what the real issues are, she said.

Men in prison massively outnumber women, and there is a risk that the particular needs of women are being ignored.

According to practice wisdom from Ruah Community Services, women are more likely to re-commit if family networks are damaged, as their strongest links are often associated with issues that originally put them in prison.

Visits can be very awkward for both women and their families, said Professor Harris.

Women, particularly the Indigenous people who make up 40 per cent of prison population, can be incarcerated thousands of miles away from families.

When visits are possible, children may be tired and fractious given the time taken to get to the prison, partners and friends might be under the threat of strip searches and some women may feel that it is better that family members do not suffer the experience.

Professor Harris said the project, which has Lotteries funding for two years, ultimately aims to provide information and insights to promote much better protection for the welfare of prisoners and their families.

We are working to establish a community advisory group and an industry reference group so we can feed the research into an exchange of ideas and get policy considered right from the start, she said.

The research will also be timely as the State government is working on an innovative way to establish a new low security women’s prison with a much more progressive approach to family visits.

This project is one of the first in Australia to focus on the needs of women prisoners.