A Comparative Analysis of the Experiences of Women in Prison in Britain and Ireland

• In Event: Cross-National Perspectives on Human Trafficking, Forced Marriage, and Women’s Prison Experiences

Abstract

There are four legal jurisdictions in Britain and Ireland: the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England and Wales. This paper considers the experiences of women in prison in Britain and Ireland with a view to comparing those experiences across these four different jurisdictions. In the Republic of Ireland, women are imprisoned in two prisons, in Limerick Prison, with a capacity for 28 women, and in the Dóchas Centre, a prison within the Mountjoy Prison complex in Dublin, with a capacity for 105 women. Ash House at Hydebank Wood Prison in Belfast, with a capacity for 71 women, is Northern Ireland’s only female prison. Cornton Vale, with a capacity for 309 women, is the main female prison in Scotland; women prisoners are also held in HMP Edinburgh, HMP Greenock, HMP Grampian and HMP Inverness. In 2013-2014, there were 431 women in prison in Scotland. In England and Wales there are twelve women’s prisons, all twelve of them located in England. The female prison population in this jurisdiction is currently about 3844. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the experiences of women in prison across the four legal jurisdictions of Britain and Ireland.

Author

• Christina Quinlan, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK