International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate progress but also to face hard truths.
One of those truths is this: some of the most vulnerable women in our society are still more likely to go to prison than into treatment. More likely to be separated from their children than supported to recover alongside them. More likely to experience systems as punitive rather than protective.
Women in custody are among the most marginalised in our communities. Many live with trauma, poor mental health, poverty, homelessness and substance use. Many have experienced domestic abuse or sexual violence. Many are primary caregivers. Almost all have faced significant adversity long before they enter the criminal justice system.
And yet, for some women, prison is the first place they experience stability, the first time substance use stops, the first time there is routine, the first time there is a bed of their own.
Prison should not be the safest place a woman knows.
If we are serious about fairness and prevention, we must strengthen real alternatives to custody and create clear, gender-specific pathways from custody into residential rehabilitation. Treatment should not be a last-minute option at crisis point. It should be considered early - before custody, instead of custody, and directly from custody when appropriate.
Women leaving prison or facing court are often trying to navigate probation, social care, housing, safeguarding and mental health services all at once. These systems are complicated even for professionals. For women with histories of trauma , especially those who have felt judged or harmed before - they can feel overwhelming and unsafe.
If we want women to engage, we have to do more than offer a placement. We must walk alongside them. That means making safeguarding processes transparent, ensuring agencies communicate clearly with one another, providing practical support to attend appointments and hearings, and building trust through consistent, relational approaches rather than reinforcing fear.
When the right pathway changes everything
Sam was 21 and 31 weeks pregnant when she was remanded into custody for shoplifting. She was facing a prison sentence that would have meant giving birth behind bars.
As her pregnancy progressed, her fear of harming her baby grew. She had struggled to stabilise her substance use in the community and felt too ashamed and frightened to fully ask for help. In desperation, she shoplifted deliberately so she would be sent back to prison. For her, custody felt like the only way to stop using and protect her unborn child.
That should give us pause.
Luckily Sam met with a judge that was informed and compassionate and offered her a suspended sentence on the condition that she enter treatment. Agencies worked quickly together, within 48 hours of referral, Sam was assessed from custody, and a residential placement was offered.
She arrived believing she would not be allowed to keep her baby.
Instead, with coordinated support from probation, social care, maternity services and our residential team, she stabilised. She engaged in antenatal care. She gave birth in hospital and returned to our family service with her daughter.
The difference between being born in prison and being born into a supported recovery environment is profound. It shapes attachment, safety and stability from the very beginning.
Sam’s story is not just about avoiding custody. It is about changing a trajectory for her and for her child.
But this should not depend on which judge is in court that day, last-minute intervention or exceptional effort. With the right systems in place, this kind of outcome could be the norm.
What real alternatives look like
Alternatives to custody are not about avoiding accountability. They are about responding to the realities of women’s lives trauma, motherhood, coercion and poverty with structured, intensive, trauma-informed treatment options, that include residential services and protect both women and their children.
Gender-specific residential services such as Phoenix's National Specialist Family Service based in Sheffield and Ophelia House in Oxford, provide psychologically and physically safe environments where women can begin to recover. They offer structured therapeutic programmes and trauma-responsive care, alongside parenting support delivered within treatment rather than separately from it. Safeguarding processes are transparent and proportionate, helping women understand what is happening and why. Support is integrated across housing, domestic abuse services, health care and the criminal justice system so women are not left trying to coordinate everything alone.
Our recent internal review of family-centred residential provision showed measurable improvements in women’s recovery outcomes alongside significant gains in children’s safety, stability and wellbeing. This is whole-family recovery in practice.
Importantly, these services are not soft options. They are structured, accountable and risk aware. They give courts and probation confidence that women are engaging in intensive interventions designed to reduce harm and reoffending.
But treatment alone is not enough.
Many women involved in the criminal justice system have experienced services as fragmented or frightening. Safeguarding can feel threatening. Court can feel overwhelming. Housing systems can feel impossible to navigate. Disclosure can feel unsafe.
We cannot simply expect traumatised women to “engage better”.
Advocacy and coordination are essential. Women need support to understand processes, prepare for meetings, attend appointments and rebuild trust in systems that may have previously let them down. This relational work is not an optional extra it is central to sustainable recovery and reduced reoffending.
What needs to change
To make real alternatives standard practice, women who would benefit from residential rehabilitation treatment need to be identified earlier. Funding pathways must be clear and accessible. Referral routes between courts, prisons, probation and treatment providers need to be strong and straightforward. Cross-agency women’s panels can support timely, informed decision-making. Sentencers need confidence that residential rehabilitation is a credible and effective alternative to custody. And recovery cannot end at discharge - long-term aftercare planning must be built in from the start.
Rehabilitation should not feel like a “golden ticket” available only when risk escalates to crisis. It should be part of a clear continuum of care that prevents harm rather than simply responding to it.
A call for change this International Women’s Day
As a society, we often expect the most from the women who have the least support. We ask them to stop using substances, comply with probation, attend court, secure housing, engage with safeguarding and parent under scrutiny all while managing trauma and fear.
Women in custody do not lack resilience.
What they need are accessible, gender-specific, trauma-informed alternatives that recognise both risk and potential.
When we create real alternatives to custody and clear pathways into residential rehabilitation, we do more than reduce reoffending. We prevent babies being born into instability. We keep families safely together. We interrupt cycles of trauma.
Recovery for women, whether alone or alongside their children - should not be rare.
It should be expected.
And together, across justice, health and social care, we can build a system where that expectation becomes reality.
If you are interested in developing women’s pathways or would like to visit one of our family services or Ophelia House please get in touch with me at [javascript protected email address]
