Speakers
Parallel Workshops
A matter of (inter)national concern is the fast-growing presence of women in the prison system; while still small in numbers, they are growing at a faster rate than male prisoners. Between 2000 and 2022, the number of women and girls in prison increased by nearly 60% while the number of men increased by approximately 22% (Fair & Walmsley, 2022). The same is the case for West Australia (WA). WA always had a high imprisonment rate for women: in June 2023, the female imprisonment rate is 60 out of 100,000 adults, which is twice the Australian average (30). The Indigenous women’s imprisonment rate is the highest of all jurisdictions within Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2024). Given the significant and ongoing increase of women in prison, we conducted a ‘Profile of Women in WA Prison research’. The qualitative part of the project consists of interviews with 80 women spread over 4 metropolitan prisons: Bandyup (remand and sentenced), Boronia (pre-release), Melaleuca (remand) and Wandoo (drug and alcohol treatment) and 4 regional prisons (Eastern Goldfields, West Kimberley, Greenough and Roebourne) in WA. This paper focusses on the lived experiences from the voices of the 80 imprisoned women. We will argue that in stopping and addressing the increase of women in prison, we need to move away from the individual ‘offender-focused’ approach and look at the broader systemic context that lets these women down until they end up in the prison system.