We welcome the announcement of the Independent Sentencing Review 2024 to 2025 by the Ministry of Justice.
Through our work with Black and minoritised migrant women who have experience of the criminal justice system, we know that urgent and radical reform is necessary. This must include concrete steps to address the systemic discrimination and racism faced by those with intersectional identities.
According to official government data, over half the women in prison or under community supervision are victim/survivors of domestic abuse. Aware of the barriers to disclosing abuse, which are more acute for Black and minoritised migrant women, we believe this data is likely to be an underrepresentation of the total number. There is no reliable data on the number of women in prison who are victim/survivors of trafficking, however, our experience and research show that this number is significant. For many of the women we support, criminal convictions are directly linked to the abuse they experienced – either because they were coerced or forced into committing a crime, or because of situations/actions related to the trauma they experienced. We believe that prison is an inappropriate environment for these women: sentencing of victim/survivors of VAWG and trafficking must be reformed.
Women navigating both the immigration and criminal justice systems are uniquely negatively impacted by custodial sentences. Research repeatedly demonstrates the benefit of community support in relation to rehabilitation and a reduction in reoffending, particularly for those convicted of offenses related to trauma and/or abuse. The majority of the women we support live with complex trauma and experience social precarity as migrant women subsequently compounded by the trauma of imprisonment. They must navigate this whilst working to rebuild their lives and community ties in a hostile environment. Unnecessary custodial sentences remove women from communities, severing relationships, disrupting support, and creating additional barriers to rehabilitation.
Black and minoritised women are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal justice system, from stop and search to long term imprisonment. We believe that this overrepresentation is driven by systemic factors, including overcriminalisation and racism within sentencing. If sentenced to more than one year of imprisonment, migrant women may face the additional and disproportionate punishment of deportation. This ‘double penalty’ is discriminatory and must end. Significant reform is needed to the way that Black and minoritised migrant women are treated by the criminal justice system, with sentencing being a crucial element of this reform.
We call on the government to ensure that their voices, and the voices of those who work with them, are meaningfully heard and considered as part of this review.
For more information, please contact Olivia Burgess at olivia@hibiscus.org.uk