BY TILLEY ELDERFIELD
SYDNEY — Expanding on its theme, "Women fighting for global justice", the Sydney West International Women's Day Collective has invited a Kerry Nettle from the Stop the Women's Jail campaign to address the Parramatta IWD rally.
Opposition to a new women's prison has been strong since Premier Bob Carr's state Labor government approved a $42 million budget to build a 3200-bed prison in South Windsor in 1999. Activists, led by prisoner rights group Justice Action's Stop the Women's Jail, have responded to the call to build a public campaign against the proposed new women's prison.
Both the No New Women's Prison Campaign and the Stop the Women's Jail campaign demand that the women's prison not be constructed, that the $42 million of taxpayers' money be spent on alternatives, that recommendations of the report by government-initiated inquiry on issues relating to women prisoners be implemented and that the government recognise that all the research in Australia and overseas shows that there are alternatives to incarceration.
Possible alternatives include the establishment of bail hostels, transitional centres where women can live with their children and drug and alcohol detoxification programs.
Long-time campaigners for social justice, Professor Tony Vinson and Dr Eileen Baldry, have analysed data which shows that the rate of incarceration for women consistently exceeds that of men.
In March 1998 there were 290 women in prison in NSW. Now there are 430, an increase of nearly 50%. Indigenous women are grossly over-represented. Twenty-three percent of women prisoners in NSW are indigenous women despite the fact that indigenous people are only 2% of the general population.
The harms associated with imprisonment are well-documented. Prison is a brutal and alienating experience in which social networks are irreparably damaged, there is minimal opportunity for women to address problems that give rise to or arise out of their offending. Eighty-five percent of women in NSW prisons are survivors of sexual abuse or incest, 70-90% of women prisoners have a drug addiction and need support instead of punishment to deal with issues that caused their addiction, 73% have been admitted to psychiatric or mental health units, 70% experienced physical violence as an adult, 39% have attempted suicide and 30% of women prisoners come from Sydney's three most disadvantaged suburbs.
There is little chance for women in custody to maintain areas of work, housing and relationships, especially relationships with their children. A 1997 parliamentary committee of inquiry estimated that 60% of women in prison are parents, with 30-40% being sole parents.
The Department of Corrective Services is responding to the increase in prisoners and prison overcrowding by proposing more prison beds. Have women in NSW have suddenly turned bad? The statistical evidence indicates otherwise.
The vast majority of women are imprisoned for non-violent crimes. The charges facing approximately half the women remand detainees, according to the 1999 prison census, fall outside the serious crime category. It is these women who should be eligible for non-custodial attention. A society which was genuinely interested in using prison only as a last resort would consider reducing the prison population by 50% by introducing non-custodial options.
Women in NSW have not just gone "bad". It's just that the focus on sentencing has gone "mad". Alternative options to custodial sentences must be implemented and issues relating to women's "crime" be seen in the context of a feminist perspective, only then can we move forward in our fight for global justice.
[The author is a member of the Western Sydney International Women's Day Collective.]