NEWS FEATURE – WOMEN IN PRISON

NEW GENDER RIGHTS FOR WOMEN PRISONERS AND OFFENDERS

DEIDRA ROBERTS, WHO

The Inter-governmental Expert Group meeting of the UN Offlce of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), held from 23 to 26 November 2009, in Bangkok was the landmark meeting that saw seventy new UN rules tabled as “global priority areas” for all women prisoners, and their children. The draft supplementary rules do not replace any of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (“standard rules”), adopted in 1955, of which the UNODC is custodian.

The timely appearance and global scope of the new rules is a wake-up call signaling that the needs of desperately poor women, and their children, are being neglected. Women are fllling prisons at a substantially higher rate than are men. Additionally, as many of the women are main providers for the household with elderly parents and grandparents, their children end up in State care or on the street from lack of alternative care.

Shackled by flnancial hardships, and in the hope for a better life, poor women are ready targets for exploitation. They are coaxed by criminals to take unimaginable risks, for very little proflt. By contrast, criminal justice responses often are over the top in classifying the offence. The increased use of imprisonment to punish offences that were previously punished by non-custodial sentences is frequently the case in relation to drug offences and non-violent theft.

Practically every country in the world, rich and poor, is seeing their social fabric disintegrate as more and more women are being charged and held in custody, often long distances from families. Sadly, the numbers bear this out. According to a study recently published by the Quaker United Nations Offlce (QUNO), “in many countries, in all regions, the female prison population has increased dramatically (drastically!) over the past ten years, and “the rate of increase in the number of women prisoners is much greater than that for men.”

The study reported that in Australia, between 1984 and 2003, the imprisonment rate for women soared by 209% compared to a 75% increased rate for men; in Mexico during a decade, there was a 235% increase in women prisoners compared to a 134% increase in the male prison population; in Kenya, a 100% increase for women versus 24% for men.” (Please see Interview with Rachel Brett accompanying this story).

A large and growing percentage of these women are targets of drug dealers. In 2003, a BBC NEWS article carried the headline: “Jamaica’s women drug mules flll UK jails.” In its report, it said: “The problem of women being used as drug couriers (body packers) between the Caribbean and Britain has become so serious that more than half of all foreign women in UK prisons are Jamaican drug mules.” More recent research shows that women in Nigeria are also being heavily preyed upon.

Moreover, the increase of body packers carrying illegal drugs across borders has become so commonplace that in October 2009, the Canadian Journal of Surgery published a report entitled “Clinical management of cocaine body packers...” which set out a treatment protocol favouring a conservative approach versus surgical intervention in removing drugs. It referenced ongoing studies, some for periods as long as flfteen and eighteen years, and a report published by JAMA in 1983 entitled: “The cocaine ‘body packer’ syndrome. Diagnosis and treatment.”

The Government of Thailand who cohosted this high-level meeting stands to gain from the maximum synergy expended in identifying country commonalities in handling increasing levels of drug crime. In a report entitled, Thai Health 2009, the second highest cause of poor health, after political conflicts, was cited as “the reemergence of narcotic drugs – mostly methamphetamines”. The report noted there were more than 203,700 drug offences recorded by the police in 2008 alone, representing a huge increase from a little over 79,000 recorded in 2004, the time of the Thai government’s “war against drugs” policy.

Virtually no country stands alone in suffering the current wave of small economic crimes and increased illegal drug trafflcking. A minimum deterrent would be to mobilize emergency resources into communities, and into the ghettos, where many of these women originate. In some countries, entrenching basic UN human rights laws are still of uppermost importance. For example, in Iran, “Girls above the age of 9 and boys over 15 years are considered adults and can be executed for drug trafflcking (among other crimes),” according to a 2009 interview with Nazanin Afshin-Jam, President of “Stop Child Executions”, recently published in the DIVA International magazine. “There are currently over 140 children on death row in Iran,” she said.

In a news release issued last December, the UNODC said the new more gender-speciflc rules call for “gender-sensitive (offence) classiflcation and security risk assessments.” Among other provisions are: “gender-specifi c healthcare services; guidance on the treatment of children living with their mothers in prison; the speciflc safety concerns of women prisoners; and the development of pre and post-release programmes that take into account the stigmatization and discrimination that women face once released from prison.”

More than forty experts represented twentyfour UNODC Member States in endorsing the rules. Other long-standing arbiters for better prison conditions who participated at the November meeting in Bangkok, included, representatives from the African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, the International Scientiflc and Professional Advisory Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the World Health Organization, among others.

The 32-page list of rules and commentary are both enabling and yet adaptable to distinct legal jurisdictions in all countries. For some, they are the long-awaited salvo to transform entire penal systems. For others, they are a call to action. For all, with improved overall health and psychosocial care for women in prisons, they can restore social harmonization in all countries, at all regional and local levels.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also joined forces with the UNODC in coauthoring a document entitled “Declaration on Women’s Health in Prison: correcting gender inequity in prison health”. In April 2009, Brenda van den Bergh, who heads up the WHO’s Regional Offlce for Europe’s Health in Prisons Project, noted that the majority of women prisoners require alternative domiciling to match their non-violent, petty theft or drug-related crimes.

The rules need to be sanctioned flrst at the UNODC 12th Congress scheduled for April in Brazil, then at the UNODC 19th Commission to be held by year-end (both fora are regular sessions on crime prevention and criminal justice), and flnally at the UN General Assembly.

Once sanctioned, these rules become official UN rules governing criminal justice systems worldwide. Men, as parents and sole care-givers of children the world over, also stand to beneflt from this new ethos of scaling up justice for children.