The Women’s Commission of the YCL welcomes the announcement of a Women’s Justice Board which aims to decrease the number of women sent to prison.
While this may be the Governments attempt to dress up a necessary response to a prison overpopulation crisis, this is an opportunity for class analysis to shape the narrative.
We call for emphasis on the factors that lead women to committing crime; The prevalence of poverty, mental ill health and substance abuse are key factors that result in crime.
Sex-based issues that force women into crime must also be addressed. It has long been noted many women are coerced by partners into crime, and 60% of women in custody or supervised in the community report being the victims of domestic abuse.
These are issues that the Women’s Justice Board must tackle and in doing so take aim at the governments ruthless austerity measures that have left services incapable of fully functioning.
The ‘tough on crime’ narrative has run amok, and prison population levels are now at crisis level. Deplorably, the number of pregnant women in prison continues to rise despite pregnant women being 5 times more likely to have a stillbirth and twice as likely to give birth prematurely in prison. The governments ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric has blood on its hands.
For too long the criminal justice system has criminalised poverty. Shoplifting was the most common indictable offence for female defendants in 2023. That same year, Calpol, a children’s analgesia, was the most shoplifted item reported in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a Borough that reports 39% of its residents living in poverty. It is clear the merciless anti-people pro-austerity campaigns of recent governments have created the crisis.
Addressing poverty and the political choices that plunge women into desperate circumstances should be a key element to the Women’s Justice Board’s work if it serious about its aims.
YCL Women’s Commission
Young Communist League
21 May 2025
London, Britain
