Dr Kate Paradine, consultant and former CEO of Women in Prison, shares her thoughts on how the recently published Delivery Plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on women’s offending will better meet the needs of young adult women.

It is testament to the dedication and direction of Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A), alongside partners like Agenda and Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ), that the long-awaited Delivery Plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on women’s offending specifically includes the needs of young adult women and girls.

The Delivery Plan includes details of how the self-harm rate for women in prison is seven times higher than that for men, with young women (18–24 years old) accounting for 36% of all incidents in 2021, despite representing approximately 10% of the female prison population. 

The Plan commits to reducing levels of self-harm by testing a specialist approach to providing young women with enhanced levels of support, although there are no details of what this will look like.

There is a commitment to publish a Young Women’s (18–25) Strategy that spans the criminal justice system, which will include best practice guidance for supporting those in custody. Two prisons will also test a bespoke approach to supporting young women, which will help to bridge the gap between youth and adult custodial provision. 

The challenge now will be to ensure the needs of this group of young adult women are not lost during the Plan’s implementation and that we see delivery of recommendations in reports like the most recent one from Agenda (November 2022) ‘Pushed Out, Left Out’.

The commitments in the Plan provide vital opportunities for change, but only if they centre the voices and experiences of young women who are living in this system – and utilise the good practice guidance and expertise of the T2A Alliance members.

Want to learn more about the experiences of young adult women in the criminal justice system?

Read Agenda and Alliance for Youth Justice’s 2022 report.

Read the report