On 25 November 2015 Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove revealed that Holloway prison, Europe’s largest female prison, located in north London, is to be closed in the summer of 2016. Amy Stanley reports.
During its 164 years in operation terrible suffering has been inflicted on women in Holloway and we do not mourn its passing; however it is obvious that this closure is not designed to reduce the number of prisons or the number of people affected by imprisonment, and will in fact create more space within new facilities to imprison more women, while increasing the inconvenience to their families, and giving the government a cash dividend from the sale of the land the prison stands on.
Holloway can hold almost 600 women; according to Gove, its closure will assist to ‘radically reform’ prisons, cut crime, and enhance public safety. However, this claim was overshadowed by the further announcement that the site is to be sold to become luxury housing. Gove boasts about contributing to solving the housing crisis but these new homes will be entirely unaffordable for local working class people, including of course the very same women and families who have experienced the criminal justice system inside Holloway.
The sale of Holloway will contribute towards the funds to build nine new prisons across England and Wales, with a total capacity of 10,000. These plans to create 10,000 prison spaces within new institutions illustrate the Tory Party’s complete disregard for actually ‘cutting crime’, exemplifying that – just like the Labour government before them – they would rather create more prisons to hold society’s ‘undesirables’ than promote rehabilitative alternatives to imprisonment. So far there has been no announcement on whether the nine new prisons will be publicly or privately run.
According to the Prison Reform Trust, women prisoners are on average dispersed at least 55 miles from their home. Despite this, Holloway has been praised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons for its north London location, which is a ‘major strength’ as it allows women from the area to be held close to their families.
Following the closure of Holloway, Gove plans to transfer the prison population to HMP Bronzefield, and later to HMP Downview, both in Surrey. Despite Gove’s claims that they have ‘good transport links to the city’; this will put an added burden on prisoners’ families, especially for those from outside London who, instead of travelling into central London, as was previously the case, now need to traverse it using complicated and time-consuming routes. Sara Hyde, a former women’s prison worker, writing in The Independent stated: ‘Holloway holds a lot of women from London, Kent and Essex. Try telling a mother from Colchester, who has already had her life blown apart by her daughter’s crime, that HMP Bronzefield has good transport links to London. It doesn’t – I’ve been there.’
Although Holloway appears now definitely set for closure, the precise time-frame is still uncertain, which will also be an extremely anxious experience for those serving long sentences, who feel uneasy regarding their future location and when the move will take place. This is a major concern considering the vulnerability of women prisoners, with women in custody five times more likely to have a mental health concern than women in the general population, and 38% of women in prison having no accommodation on release from prison.
Of course this does not mean that keeping Holloway open would be a more favourable option. Despite the last published inspection of Holloway noting that the prison is ‘a very difficult establishment to run’, this does not mean that sending women to yet another prison, larger in size and further away from home, would ‘solve’ the issue of women’s imprisonment. It is a long-established fact that imprisoning women using the current model is not an adequate response to women who ‘offend’, with 81% of those in prison serving sentences for non-violent crimes. Although true prison reform will always be limited while society operates under capitalism, the only response to women’s imprisonment which would be partially adequate and would begin to address the underlying problems, would be to adopt the recommendations of the 2007 Corston Report, which the government has ignored, by abolishing the current system and implementing small, community custodial units for women, where they can remain in their local area and maintain family and social ties.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 249 February/March 2016
