Sentencing Women to Harm - A Response to the Independent Sentencing Review

The Independent Sentencing Review (May 2025) lands in the wake of a prison estate that is, by all official accounts, at breaking point. However for those of us working on the ground, with women who carry their convictions like shadows, this moment is less about headlines and more about hope, hope that this is not just another report destined for Whitehall archives.

At Coming Home, we welcome the review’s call to reduce short custodial sentences. The recommendation for a presumption against prison terms under 12 months is a step toward something more humane, more effective, and far more just. But let’s be clear, for women, particularly those convicted of non-violent offences, this isn’t just a sentencing issue. It’s a life issue.

The reality of women in prison

In England and Wales, women make up just 4% of the prison population. Yet the harm they experience in custody is grossly disproportionate. Over 60% of women in prison are serving sentences of less than 12 months. For what? Shoplifting. Unpaid fines. Survival crimes.

Let’s not forget:

• Half of all women in prison report having committed their offence to support someone else’s drug use or needs (Prison Reform Trust, 2023).

• 80% of women in prison have mental health problems, and the majority are survivors of domestic abuse (Women in Prison, 2022).

• Most are mothers. Many are primary carers. A short sentence doesn’t just punish them, it destabilises families, children, entire communities.

  
  

What does a short sentence achieve? Nothing measurable in terms of rehabilitation, and everything in terms of disruption. Women lose their homes, their jobs, their children. They emerge with more trauma, fewer options, and a criminal record that follows them into every job interview, housing application, and medical form for the rest of their lives.

The economics of injustice

It costs the state £60,000 per year to imprison a woman, and over £10,000 just to process her through the system(Ministry of Justice, 2024). In contrast, robust, community-based alternatives that combine support with accountability; such as women’s centres and trauma-informed programmes average £1,300 per woman, per year (New Economics Foundation, 2023).

Let that sink in. For every woman sentenced to custody, the public pays over 40 times more than it would cost to fund a community alternative that actually works.

That’s not just unjust. It’s financially reckless.

Pregnant women are still being sentenced to harm

Perhaps the most distressing failure of our justice system is the continued incarceration of pregnant women. Despite widespread calls from midwives, medics, human rights groups, and Parliament itself, women are still being sent to prison while pregnant, often for non-violent offences, often into overcrowded, under-resourced institutions unequipped to meet their needs.

The Sentencing Council (2025) has stated that custodial sentences for pregnant women should be a last resort. But the system doesn’t know what restraint looks like. In April this year, a woman gave birth alone in segregation in HMP Styal due to understaffing. This isn’t reform. This is systemic neglect.

So where do we go from here?

The Independent Sentencing Review aligns with many of the aims of the new Women’s Justice Board, which has already begun the work of shifting sentencing cultures, promoting diversion, and advocating for alternatives rooted in care. If funded properly, it could be transformative.

We’ve seen reports come and go before. Real change requires more than policy; it demands political will. It demands that we stop building prisons and start building trust. That we stop surveilling women in pain and start supporting them out of crisis. That we recognise the failure of custodial punishment and invest, meaningfully and immediately, in what works: community.

At Coming Home, we deliver that vision in action. We support women on release to come home to themselves, to stability, to opportunity, to freedom. Our work proves what this report gestures towards: that lived experience, not institutional punishment, is the path to real rehabilitation.

This is a moment. But it’s only that unless we take action.

DEEDS NOT WORDS.

If this Review is to be worth the paper it’s printed on, we must ensure it becomes more than a political gesture. We need action, and we need it led by women who’ve lived the system and survived it.

No more prison for pregnant women.No more short sentences for non-violent offences.No more punishment for poverty.

We don’t need more time. We need more courage.