News In Focus
30 August 2010
Treatment of women offenders comes under scrutiny
A leading academic will use this year’s Apex Scotland Annual Lecture to examine how women are dealt with in Scotland’s criminal justice system.
Baroness Vivien Stern CBE, Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London and Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics, will deliver the lecture on Tuesday 7 September.
She will argue that the way women in trouble with the law are dealt with in Scotland is hard to understand.
Women in prison have an exceptionally high level of health and social problems, and for most female offenders, prison is not an answer but an additional problem. Yet the number of women in prison goes steadily upwards: an average of 210 in the year 2000, 417 now, in spite of many political commitments to find a better way.
High level reports, parliamentary committees and eminent academics have all argued that something is very wrong with a system that sees so many women ending up in prison. The lecture will examine the situation and pose questions about equality and justice.
Apex Scotland is a national organisation that aims to address the employability needs of offenders, ex-offenders and young people and adults at risk, helping to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders back into the community.