Built to Harm: how women’s prisons take lives — report by Inquest, published 3 December 2025
This report looks at how the prison system puts women’s lives in danger and repeatedly ignores basic mental and physical health concerns until it is too late, leaving behind a pile of bodies in its wake. It exposes that no amount of reforming the criminal justice system will fix this and that the system isn’t broken but rotten to the core.
As of December 2024, 3,500 women were imprisoned in England and Wales. Despite some weak-willed attempts to reduce this number, the Ministry of Justice instead built 500 more prison places for women. Inquest draws attention to this and other supposed government efforts to divert women from custody, such as building community centres or funding charities and women’s centres, but none of these have been delivered on.
The report tells the story of multiple women who required mental health services or treatment for physical ailments, as prisons failed to respond to emergency cell bells, or provide care to prisoners at risk of suicide or self-harm. In one instance they ignored a woman requesting medical attention as she was giving birth, which led to the death of her baby.
• In 2019, Saria Hart was found dead in HMP Foston Hall. She had told prison staff she planned to self-harm and had passed two notes to prison guards specifically indicating she would attempt to commit suicide.
• In 2003, 18-year-old Sarah Campbell died in Styal prison following a drug overdose. This was despite the prison being aware of her drug use and history of self-harm. Following her death, Sarah’s mother Pauline became a staunch advocate and campaigner for better treatment of women prisoners, working tirelessly until her own death in 2008. FRFI comrades joined her on many protests outside prisons.
Recent attention has been drawn to women’s prisons because of the detention of pro-Palestinian prisoners. HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where the majority of these prisoners are located, has seen a series of preventable deaths in recent years. The deficiencies in medical treatment at Bronzefield were highlighted during the recent hunger strike, especially when Qesser Zuhra — who had been refusing food for 46 days and was suffering a health crisis — was only taken to hospital following a mass demonstration outside the prison.
Inquest suggests that the government reduce the prison population, depart from a system of punishment in prisons, and focus on meeting women’s material and care needs. However, this is simply a wish list. The prison system is not cruel without purpose, but operates as a fundamental cog in the system of capitalism. Unless we fight for a socialist society, the material needs of women will not be met, and they will continue to be imprisoned for crimes born from desperation and circumstance.
