The Young Women's Justice Project have published their final report,“We’ve not given up”: Young women surviving the criminal justice system
We know that women who find themselves caught up in the criminal justice system are often very vulnerable. This is especially true of young women.
We also know that many of those in our prisons are those who have been failed by the State as evidenced by the large numbers of care leavers.
The first brush with criminal activity provides an opportunity for intervention. It is an opportunity that should be taken. It should be taken because it is morally the right thing to do, for the State to support those in need to get their lives in order. Without a positive intervention, first time offenders are very likely to embark on a pathway of further offending.
Instead, our criminal justice system deals with the offence. In so doing, it can behave in a way which is dehumanising to the offender. Indeed where someone is vulnerable, it can cause harm.
The offence can be an expression of underlying trauma which needs to be treated appropriately or else it will be compounded.
There can also be prejudice and unconscious bias at play where offenders are care leavers or minorities.
This isn’t just bad for the individual. It is bad for society. It leads to more crime and antisocial behaviour. And it costs the taxpayer. Leaving people in a cycle of reoffending is poor value for money and leads to worse outcomes for all of us.
I welcome the insight this report gives into young women offenders and I sincerely hope that more effort will be made to develop interventions which will support them. We are talking about less than a thousand individuals every year. But if successful it could prevent many thousands of offences.