Women prisoners and the United Nations
Among several workshops presented by QUNO at Canterbury was one on the treatment of women prisoners. Oliver Robertson explores how collaborative Quaker efforts have helped to improve their conditions
If everyone is equal before the law, why should women prisoners be treated differently? And if people are meant to receive the same punishment for the same offence, why should offenders with children receive different sentences from those without? Answer: because they are different, they do live in different situations and the same punishments can affect them very differently.
Two examples help to illustrate this. Firstly, women’s prison regimes are usually adaptations of systems designed for men. But a much higher proportion of women prisoners have previously been subjected to physical or sexual abuse than their male counterparts, so procedures like strip-searching can feel like re-victimisation. Secondly, children may see their lives turned upside down following parental imprisonment and have to change house, school and carer, despite having committed no crime themselves. Punishments, like crimes, are rarely victimless.
Collaboration
Quakers in Britain, Europe and at the United Nations have taken up these two interconnected issues over the past eight years. Beginning with statements on the specific situation and needs of women prisoners to the annual UN Crime Commission in Vienna where governments meet to discuss international criminal justice standards, Friends have gathered information, produced reports and lobbied for changes in domestic, European and international law. At least three new sets of international standards have emerged from processes in which Friends were directly involved.
Part of the reason for the effectiveness of the work is the way in which the different Quaker agencies listed below worked together, sharing information and jointly planning strategies in order to build on each others’ work:
• Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW)
• Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA)
• Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), Geneva
• Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) representatives to the UN Crime Commission
Success stories
One success took place in the Council of Europe, with the passing of Resolution 1663 (2009) on women in prison. This was initiated by QCEA and incorporated many of the recommendations from QCEA’s 2007 report Women in Prison.
The second international success was the approval, at the end of 2010, of the new UN Rules on the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (commonly called the Bangkok Rules because of where they were devised and the leading role of the Thai government in developing them). Current and former QUNO staff took part in the expert meetings that drafted the Rules and Friends are now promoting the Rules to governments, encouraging implementation.
This process benefited from collaboration between QUNO in Geneva, with access to the various UN human rights mechanisms, and the FWCC representatives in Vienna, lobbying the criminal justice institutions. When one part of the UN was unreceptive to the arguments, attention could switch to the other; when one part was making progress, this could be used to encourage the other to take similar steps. It also meant that the Rules benefited from two areas of expertise – human rights concerns meant that prison order and security were not overly dominant in the Rules, but the input from criminal justice officials meant that the new standards weren’t dismissed by prison staff as being written by people ‘with no understanding of how the system worked’.
The third achievement involved work with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Europe Office. As part of its Health in Prisons Project, WHO Europe looked at the specific health needs of women in prison, with support from QCEA, QUNO and the FWCC Vienna representatives. This produced the Kyiv Declaration on Women’s Health in Prison, which suggested detailed ways of supporting the health needs of women and will be supplemented by a checklist currently under development. The Quaker contribution is recognised in the abstract of the Declaration.
These achievements are vindications of Quaker ways of working – focusing on neglected or overlooked issues and people, working diligently for the long-term and not stopping until the work has been done. We can’t say that these achievements only happened because Friends were involved, but Friends did play an important part in raising awareness, identifying good practice and pushing for the adoption of these standards.
The future
So now what? There is clearly still work to be done to put the new policies into practice, but for the Friends working at a policy level, it makes more sense (and better uses their skills) to work for similar results in another area, developing standards which others can then use to put pressure on governments. Exactly what to look at varies between the different Quaker organisations, their expertise and the agencies they’re working with. QCEA is now exploring the resettlement and rehabilitation of released offenders, the FWCC Vienna representatives continue their long-standing efforts to move Restorative Justice up the UN agenda, and QPSW is engaged in collecting the stories of all those affected by the criminal justice system.
Children of prisoners
For QUNO, the focus has switched to children of prisoners. This work was always linked – when first asking for approval to work on women in prison, QUNO was told by African Friends to also look at children of prisoners, because the issues are so closely connected. Thanks to six years of QUNO work and publications, there is growing awareness of the issue at the UN: now the goal is for more concrete action. In September, at its 2011 Day of General Discussion, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (the expert body overseeing state compliance with child rights standards) will hold the first ever substantive discussion on children of prisoners in the UN. (QUNO led on drafting the proposal and is heavily involved in preparations for the day.)Next spring, the UN Human Rights Council (where governments discuss human rights) should cover the issue in its annual full-day discussion on the rights of the child).
After that, who knows, but it may lead towards some international guidance, or at least more awareness of how differently countries treat (or ignore) the issue. A world in which some states (Norway) bar children living in prison with their parents at all while others (Germany) allow them in until the age of six, or where some countries (South Africa) require courts to consider the best interests of the child while sentencing but others (Venezuela) don’t alter sentences because of the parental responsibilities of the offender, is a world in need of better understanding and sharing of good ideas. With perseverance, Quakers can help achieve that.
Oliver is Programme Officer at QUNO Geneva and one of the FWCC Vienna representatives.
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