By Tirion Havard, Sarah Bartley, Ian Mahoney,  Chris Magill,  Chris Flood

This research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the British Academy, as part of their Understanding Communities programme. The research involved collaboration between four higher-education institutions, namely London South Bank University, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Brighton. Partnerships were also formed with local and national organisations, including Clean Break Theatre Company, Restoke and Staffordshire Women’s Aid. The research focused on two communities: women with convictions (WwC) in Staffordshire and residents of Stoke-on-Trent. It used a mixed methodological approach that involved designing and delivering an arts-based transformative justice (TJ) intervention, undertaking ethnographic observations, running focus groups and conducting interviews with TJ experts. The overarching aims of this project were to see: • if TJ can effectively facilitate social cohesion and promote equality within local communities (for the purposes of this research, ‘equality’ is appraised by exploring strengths, assets, attributes, connectedness, enhanced individual welfare and social well-being); • if TJ can effectively support WwC to reintegrate and resettle into their local communities. To achieve these aims, we set out to explore and meet the following objectives: i. Identify the needs of and barriers faced by WwC when they try to resettle/reintegrate into their local community. ii. Identify and activate the strengths, assets and attributes that local communities can bring to the reintegration and engagement of WwC. iii. Determine the suitability of an arts-based approach to TJ for improving community cohesion. iv. Establish whether TJ can support the reintegration of WwC into their local community by making them feel stronger, more equal and more connected, and assess the broader impact this has on community cohesion. v. Establish whether TJ can enhance individual welfare and social well-being for both WwC and local residents and measure the costeffectiveness of the approach. vi.Inform policy and practice about the needs of WwC and how best to meet them through community-led interventions. vii. Contribute to the literature and knowledge base about using TJ to engage and integrate communities within a UK context. viii. Promote the personal and professional development of all those involved in the project. As a conceptual framework, TJ focuses on overcoming ingrained social and structural barriers to engagement and justice issues including the social, political and economic status of communities and the individuals within them. In focusing on community accountability for crime, victimisation and subsequent support for victims and people convicted of offences, TJ recognises that patriarchal social structures can legitimise violence, particularly towards women, and that the state, in this case the criminal justice system (CJS), perpetuates cycles of abuse and (re) traumatises people. TJ is vital for understanding and exploring societal attitudes to justice, and to engage with difficult conversations around the role that communities can play in addressing the harms associated with the actions of people within them  

Lonron; Nuffield Foundation, 2024. 86p.

By Lindsey Linder

For the past 30 years, the number of women incarcerated in America has grown exponentially, increasing at nearly twice the rate of men’s incarceration. With only five percent of the world’s female population, the United States accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world’s incarcerated women. Texas has contributed greatly to this surge in incarcerated women, with one of the top 10 highest female incarceration rates in the country. Regarding growth over time, female incarceration in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ, the state’ corrections system) increased 908 percent from 1980– 2016, compared to an increase in the male population of 396 percent. In other words, female incarceration in Texas has increased at more than twice the rate of male incarceration over the past 40 years. Alarmingly, a more recent spike in system-involved women has occurred as Texas has lowered its population in TDCJ, and Texas now incarcerates more women by sheer number than any other state. From 2009– 2018, Texas reduced its men’s prison population by 10,179 while backfilling its prisons with 122 women.6 As of 2018, women incarcerated in TDCJ numbered 12,076, representing 8.3 percent of the incarcerated population, up from 7.7 percent in 2009. Additionally, the number of women serving 10 years or more in Texas increased over 50 percent from 2005 to 2014. And the rise in female incarceration is not exclusive to prisons. The number of women in Texas jails awaiting trial has grown 48 percent since 2011, even as the number of female arrests in Texas has decreased 20 percent over that time period.10 The issues facing incarcerated women are complex, as are the underlying causes of their incarceration. However, because women comprise only a small portion of the overall incarcerated population, their needs are largely disregarded in larger justice reform conversations. One of the predominant obstacles to reform has been the lack of data on who these women are and how they become entangled in the system. To help bridge this gap, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) launched the “Justice for Women” campaign in March 2018, starting with a two-part report series on women in Texas’ justice system  These two reports, which incorporated the results of our survey of more than 430 women incarcerated in Texas prisons, explored the concerning increase in the number of justice system-involved women in Texas and examined the unique issues they face prior to and during incarceration. TCJC accompanied the reports with a webpage dedicated to women’s justice, which includes stories of women impacted by Texas’ justice system—stories that have been critical to reform  

Austin: Texas Criminal Justice Coalition 2020. 28p.