WALES desperately needs a women’s prison, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said on Monday after making a pastoral visit to HM Prison Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire.
Dr Morgan spoke of the isolation and distress of Welsh women prisoners, who serve about seven weeks on remand at Eastwood Park before being transferred either to Derby or to Surrey. They comprise a third of the prison’s 300 inmates, and come from most of Wales south of Aberystwyth.
The women had pleaded for a prison in their own country, he said. “Eastwood Park is an excellent remand centre, one of the best prisons I’ve been to, and the staff are very caring. But I think the staff themselves have some sympathy with these women,” he said on Tuesday.
“Prison is still a frightening place for most women, particularly the younger ones still in their teens. It does create difficulties. For men, the main problem on release is having a job; for women, it’s the break-up of the family, because husbands or boyfriends haven’t stood by them, but have gone on to the next relationship. It’s difficult to sustain a relationship if you live in Pembrokeshire and have to travel to Derby.”
Visiting was expensive, and many families did not have their own transport, he said. The women, many of whom have Welsh as their first language, also felt cut off from their cultural background in a place without Welsh channels or Welsh newspapers. “It’s a kind of psychological difference which people find hard to grasp,” Dr Morgan said.
The Archbishop will be lobbying the Home Office for women’s provision in Wales: a women’s wing at Bridgend, perhaps, or at a new prison to be built at Caernavon.
Dr Morgan was welcomed by the Deputy Governor, Paul Stickler; met Mary Campbell Hill, who chairs the Independent Monitoring Board; and talked with 20 women in an open session.
The prison Chaplain, the Revd Judith Phillips, who invited Dr Morgan, said that women in prison were invisible and often forgotten, and that the Church had a duty to care for them.
“The Archbishop’s visit was seen by the women as a sign that they had not been forgotten despite being away from home. . . The thing that will stay with me, that said most about them and about him, was that they asked him to bless them and were anxious that he should lay hands on them,” she said.
Read a day in the life of a women's prison chaplain here