Blog for International Women’s Day – Supporting women’s mental health in criminal justice settings

For International Women’s Day 2025 I would like to highlight some elements specifically related to women from the recent submission by Together’s Criminal Justice Service to the Ministry of Justice as part of the sentencing review they commissioned. (Read the full submission)

The first issue relating to the lived experiences of women was in relation to domestic abuse and the risk posed to the women we work with on a daily basis. We have highlighted some key statistics that demonstrate this:

• In some countries up to 71% of women will experience domestic abuse
• In England at least 25% will and in Scotland that figure is at least 33%
• The biggest predictor for domestic homicide is being female
• In those instances 81% are married and 71% are unmarried
• Women are 9x more likely to be killed by partner than a stranger
• In the UK 2 deaths per week are due to Domestic Violence

These crimes, and particularly the most serious domestic homicide, are amongst the easiest to predict with a pattern of behaviour and escalation in risk that can be tracked back with opportunities for intervention. The following statistics bear this out:

• 74% of women who are murdered have presented to A&E in previous year
• 88% of women who are survivors of serious assault presented to A&E in the year before

Finally, it isn’t just death through domestic homicide that we see. There are also situations where the woman cannot stand the abuse, coercive control and violence anymore and tragically decide to take their own life:

• In UK between 4-10 women a week take their own life because of domestic abuse

This isn’t something that happens elsewhere or to women only linked in with domestic abuse services. From within our Criminal Justice directorate, we have two women specific services where we have seen this first hand. Within our Women’s Mental Health Treatment Requirement Service we have had a number of incidents of domestic abuse where the women who use the service have been the victim, one where they were the victim of a serious violent offence and needed an emergency hospital admission. Within Bluebird, our Women’s Offender Personality Disorder Pathway Service, we have women that have reported incidents of domestic violence and taken out restraining orders on current and past partners.

The following quote was taken from a Domestic Abuse Masterclass workshop delivered by Dr Jane Monckton Smith – Criminologist, a specialist in homicide and interpersonal violence and an advisor to UK Police Services and shows the fear and hopelessness often experienced by women in domestic violent relationships.

‘One day I hope he will realise that he doesn’t really love me and he’ll just leave. He might even find someone else, and just let me go. I dream about that. The only way I’ll be safe is if he leaves me, I can’t leave him, he’ll kill me’

Below is an extract from our submission related to this issue specifically:

We are concerned that there is so much research that shows that people in relationships affected by domestic violence are more likely to be killed or seriously harmed by their partner/ex-partner but perpetrators often aren’t sentenced until they have repeatedly committed violence. Even then, many are given a Suspended Sentence Order rather than custody and the victim remains at risk of harm. One option would be to pose harsher sentences, but the most important factor is that these are dealt with in a timely manner and that there is immediate access to specific interventions while in custody or in the community. If perpetrators are given a community order, then we would like to see access to programmes happening early in the sentence.

We also need to look at how these cases are monitored in the community and the rehabilitative activity that we can offer. There is Building Better Relationships, but we are convinced this is not sufficient. More one to one work with a focus on unpacking domestic violence perpetrators’ beliefs, emotions and behaviour is needed. There is more complexity to domestic violence than the physical or verbal violence and to protect victims, we need to address the underlying issues. We would like to see longer term programmes following a similar model as the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway services with a relational element that includes Mentalisation-Based Treatment and relationship skills for domestic violence perpetrators where more intensive and specialist support is required. We would welcome any community interventions on relationships, through specialist organisations working within probation settings. We are one of those but there are so many examples from all of us in the voluntary sector on the positive impact we have been making on the people’s lives.

We also highlighted the need for specialist courts and the following example where this has been used to great effect, arguing for the expansion to other courts:

The specialised domestic violence court at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, held on specific days, is a model that works well, but is not replicated in other London courts we work within. The Magistrate, Clerk and Crown Prosecution Service all received specific training and there was a noticeable difference in the approach to sentencing in this court with perpetrators receiving longer sentences and greater opportunity and access to rehabilitation programmes as a result.

The second issue was related to the different options available to sentencers and advocating for the increased use of community sentences as opposed to short custodial sentences. This is an issue we see across all our services and particularly the negative impacts of short custodial sentences on women. Those include potential loss of housing, negative impact on dependents where the women is the sole carer, not to mention that short prison sentences are both harmful and ineffective. The following statistics highlighted in a report by the Prison Reform Trust (2023) and based on Ministry of Justice court data demonstrates this:

• 6 in 10 women sent to prison serve sentences of less than 6 months
• Over half (58%) of prison sentences given to women in 2022 were less than 6 months
• Analysis by the Ministry of Justice revealed that prison sentences of under 12 months with supervision on release are associated with higher levels of reoffending than sentences served in the community via court orders
• For those cases with more than 50 previous offences, the odds of reoffending were 36% higher where short-term custody rather than a court order was given

The following is another extract from the submission where we highlight this:

The use of community sentences needs to be expanded, and resources put into those diversion programmes, such as Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTRs) particularly, as an alternative to short sentences.

We have seen the huge benefit for women in London Women’s Primary Mental Heath Treatment Requirement Service, with treatment as part of their community sentence rather than receiving a short custodial sentence. This avoids the potential impact short sentences have on women, particularly with housing and childcare responsibilities where they are the sole parent. It also enables access to the primary (or in some cases secondary) mental health support they would struggle to get through community mental health provision not under an order.

Similar to the domestic violence courts above we also highlighted the need for specialist women’s courts as detailed in the below extract:

We would welcome the creation of women-specific courts, with a similar function to the MH courts. We have been providing women-specialist Liaison and Diversion services at three London magistrates’ courts, and therefore have been able to reach a higher number of women compared to a generic L&D service (see summary of evaluation report attached). We recognise the need for a different approach, not only to the support offered but also to the sentencing options available for women, given they tend to commit low level offences and, often, do not pose a risk to the public.

We feel this would be particularly useful to our Women’s Mental health Treatment (WMHTR) service and could lead to an increased confidence of sentencers since they will be regularly notified of positive outcomes achieved when given an order.

The full submission can be viewed here if you are interested in the other elements of sentencing we felt important to consider as part of a review.