In this episode of Holding the Key, Bishop Rachel, the Anglican Bishop for HM Prisons spoke to Kate Fraser, Head of Practice for Women in Prison.
Kate said, “We know that all pregnancies in prison are high risk, three babies have died in a women’s prison in the past five years, and it’s absolutely outrageous that we’re sending pregnant women to prison.”
She goes on, “The idea that a teenager can give birth on the concrete floor of a cell with no support, no medical help, nobody with her in a women’s prison … I don’t think most taxpayers expect anything like that to happen when a woman is sent to prison, I think it’s absolutely shocking.”
In this tenth podcast in the series of ‘Holding the Key: Unlocking the door to doing prison differently’, Bishop Rachel talks to Kate Fraser about her experience of the justice system through her work with Women in Prison. Kate tells us, “The system is broken. There was a 2023 report from Tower Hamlets that said the most shoplifted item is Calpol [a painkiller for babies and small children], and to me that speaks volumes about the sorts of issues that women are facing.”
“Over half of women going into prison will have reported some experience of domestic abuse, more than one in ten women going to prison were rough sleeping, and will probably go back to rough sleeping on release from prison. It’s a really sad, tragic picture; and if you take people with those issues and send them to prison, those issues are just compounded.”
Bishop Rachel says, “Surely in the big picture we want to create stronger communities, and yet we still are obsessed with this idea of punishment.”
Listen now:
Subscribe to the series via:
About the series
Bishop Rachel is currently recording a series of Podcasts called – ‘Holding the key: A series of conversations to unlock the door to doing prison differently’. Bishop Rachel is joined by influencers and change-makers as they ask the questions – what is prison really for and more importantly what could the alternatives be?
News Hub
