Visiting a Women's Prison

This post comes out of order, because I wanted to write down my feelings and reflections today, rather than leaving it a week until I get to this point in my blog. Some of the names and details are left out, just to ensure security for various people.

I don't know where to start processing what we've seen today at the prison. I know God is a God of justice, and that although perfect justice comes at the end of time, there is most definitely a place for working towards justice here and now. When crimes are committed, laws are broken, lives are taken and so on, there must be consequences, there must be justice. But I don't know if what I saw today can really be described as justice.

The remand section:
In the remand section, we helped with a legal rights and representation seminar. This was done in a smallish courtyard, in the middle of the 'wards' (like big cells where up to 50 women sleep). The women sat in two sections - those charged with capital offences, like murder and violent robbery, were on the right in their plain grey uniforms (just like a thin nightdress - definitely not warm enough for today's weather) and those charged with other offences in striped uniforms on the left.

About two thirds of the women there hadn't been given their charge sheets - one of their constitutional rights, and vital for them to be able to take their case forward. Constitutionally, they must be provided with a lawyer if they cannot afford one. But over half said they didn't have a lawyer. Most of them didn't know they had rights to these. Almost all of them were offered bail, but at such a high price they had no chance of ever affording it - and didn't know they could appeal to the judge to have it reduced according to their circumstances. Some had been there a few weeks, others a few years. It all depends on how long your case takes, and in many cases this is prolonged by procedural inefficiency, witnesses or even advocates not turning up and so on. There may be many hearings spread out over months, rather than your whole case being heard together as it would be in England. Some of the women there have committed offences, but others hold that they have been wrongly accused, and history shows that this is often the case - as one of our partners here says, for this reason 'delayed justice is not justice' - if you are left in remand for two years, and then acquitted, you've been wrongly imprisoned for two years of your life, with no compensation, and that whole time not knowing how much longer you'd have to wait for your case to be completed. The flip side of this is that when we were chatting to some advocates, there's also many cases I feel like the chronic delays in the system are denying justice to both victims and their families, and to the accused - guilty or not.

We also spent some time conducting interviews with the remandees to find out what their cases are, so that they can either be helped to represent themselves, or to be represented by our partners. Charge sheets, witness statements and medical reports are all over the place - some are good, some are not. Some of the women had them, others had half of what they should, and others had none. Reports of malpractice amongst officials at various stages are rife, perhaps influencing people to change their statements or to refuse bail payment.

Although I've studied criminal law, today was the first time I've interviewed someone charged with murder. She's pretty much my age, and was very lively and active in the seminar - knowing a lot of the answers and seemingly pretty bright. She gave off quite a confident, almost sassy sort of front, but once we really started talking, a much more timid and frightened side came out. She admits the act but doesn't seem to have the intention required. I also wonder if there's more going on in the history than she's letting on, which might contribute to a partial defence, but in this initial interview we didn't get further into that. When we started, I initially felt odd and uncomfortable interviewing someone who opened with 'we were arguing and then I stabbed them', but this very quickly changed to anger at myself for judging her. I prayed that God would help me see her through his eyes, and throughout the rest of the interview he really did that. Behind the confident, stand-offish front began to show a softer side, full of insecurities and vulnerabilities. She was deeply sorry for what she'd done, and although this isn't enough to excuse her from consequences for what she did, all of my feelings round this were complicated by the fact that murder still carries the death penalty, which I disagree with (in fact, no one's been executed in about 80 years, but people are still sentenced to death and then stay in prison for the rest of their lives. There are some politicians who want to bring back execution, so it's not really an equivalent to a life sentence, in that it doesn't carry the same security). By the end of the interview, we'd been able to give her some initial advice around some of the partial defences that might well apply to her case, thus reducing it to manslaughter rather than murder, because certain elements of the crime of murder weren't present. I wasn't able to get her to open up enough about things, and I don't know the detail of the case law here so we couldn't come to any final conclusions, but the lawyers will be back in soon and can take the case further. God really answered my prayer, and I was able to see her as real person, vulnerable and insecure, in as much need of a saviour and of love as me. And although this doesn't mean she shouldn't go to prison for what she did, it means she shouldn't be denied her humanity and a chance to hear the gospel and to improve herself when she is in prison. I think this has deepened my understanding of how God looks at us, despite all our sin and the things we do wrong and yet still loves us so deeply. 

The inmates section:
This was also a place of mixed, conflicted feelings. On the surface, many of the women we spoke to seemed happy and pleased to see us. There was a prayer group meeting and worshipping together, there's a bakery where some of them work to improve their skills and there's a craft project, the proceeds from which are held on account so that when the women are released they at least have a little money to help them (I'm a teeny bit sceptical as to whether this actually happens, but it's a really good idea and I hope it does!) There's both a primary and a high school, so the women can complete their education (it's not age specific like it is in the UK - you could start primary aged 40 here) and there's lots of outside groups that come in to do training sessions.  However, our partners explained that under the surface is a lot of resentment and anger. The wards where they sleep are small, and the one we saw reminded me too much of Auschwitz. 66 women would sleep in the small room - mattresses lined the floor both sides of the room, but there were only about 20 of these. We were pointed to the isolation block for high risk prisoners - there didn't seem to be any windows, and this was the smallest of all the blocks.

I think the hardest thing was seeing all the young children - both in the remand section and in the inmates section. If a women gives birth whilst in custody, the child will grow up in prison with the mother till the age of four. There's a kindergarten for them where they mix with the staff children. Once the child reaches the age of four, if the mother's term hasn't ended then they will try to reunite the child with their family, but usually they just end up in a children's home. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of provision or process when the mother has a child before being arrested - so long as the child is past the breast feeding stage, they just get left in the community. The death penalty adds another dimension to this - if a woman is pregnant she will get life imprisonment rather than a death sentence. There are some lawyers actually advising the women to get pregnant however they can in order to avoid the death sentence. This leads to children being born into prison, and then spending the rest of their childhood in a childrens home, and then growing up without ever seeing their mum, because she is in prison serving a life sentence. I find this deeply troubling, and it's a dimension to the problems of the death penalty I had never thought about.

In some ways, it'd be easy to despair, to be paralysed by the whole thing and the scale of the problems in many ways seems insurmountable. However, in looking to Jesus, there is hope: hope for a new creation, hope for perfect justice and hope that things can change. We are called to be agents of change, to challenge injustices we see and to speak out for those who don't have a voice. Although we might not be able to sort out all the problems that we see, we can start to work towards improving one of them. The work of our partners here is really inspiring in this way and it has been a real privilege to work alongside them. My prayer is that I won't forget how I've been moved by this, and that'll it'll spur me into action, into seeking more earnestly where God would have me serve him and the injustices he is asking me to challenge, through the way I live and speak, and through how I use my law degree.