Gender and SSR Toolkit On 14 February 2002 high-ranking Corrections Department officials escorted an Amnesty International delegation on a visit to Lard Yao Women’s Prison, Nonthaburi Province, on the outskirts of Bangkok. Corrections officials acknowledged problems of overcrowding and the dangerously high prisoner to guard ratio. As is the case with most prisons in the Kingdom, severe overcrowding is due to a very high level of arrest and imprisonment of drug users and traffickers.69 Challenges and opportunities for integrating gender: ■ ■ ■ ■ ! ■ ■ ■ Discrimination against women is often widespread in these countries and the penal system reflects this, as regards treatment of both female prisoners and female prison staff. Addressing past violence and sexual abuse is likely to be hampered by taboos about recognising the existence of such problems, and therefore counselling is unlikely to be available. Similarly, efforts to combat sexual violence in prisons are likely to confront a conspiracy of silence. When working in very poor countries to improve the prisons, it is necessary to find low cost solutions that are sustainable and make sense from a local economic point of view. In poor countries, the prison system may be able to benefit from the help of organisations – such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or Medicins Sans Frontières – in meeting the health and other needs of detainees. Tips It is wise to understand the role that imprisonment plays in the system and the culture as well as the issues that affect women and other groups in the wider society before embarking on gender-responsive penal reform. Prison regimes for women in developing countries need to take into account the likelihood of abandonment and destitution on release from prison and make efforts to provide women with an alternative means of earning a living. Getting children and juveniles out of adult prisons and into more suitable surroundings can be achieved with the involvement of outside organisations such as UNICEF. Other UN agencies and NGOs might support efforts to improve conditions in women’s prisons. For example, in a visit to the Czech Republic in 2006, the Committee reported on the case of a Ukrainian prisoner, F, who was being held in a confinement cell for ‘destroying prison property’. He was ‘a slight man who [was] gaunt and tremulous’. The delegation ‘formed the view that F had been repeatedly raped and physically abused while in Valdice Prison. Moreover, during his time in Section E he had been subjected to forced anal and oral intercourse with three different prisoners, and had also been obliged to masturbate them’.70 Some developed countries are seeing a trend of high and rapidly increasing use of imprisonment and particularly rapid increases in the use of imprisonment for women. In England and Wales the number of women in prison has more than doubled over the past ten years.71 In the US, between 2000 and 2006, the female incarcerated population grew by 3.3 per cent a year whilst the male incarcerated population grew by 2 per cent.72 Developed countries are more likely to have equal opportunity employment policies that lead to mixed staffing and, in some countries, women have reached the top of the prison administration or have become directors of large prisons holding only men. There are still, however, problems of harassment against women staff and sexual abuse of prisoners. Challenges and opportunities for integrating gender: ■ ■ ■ ■ 5.4 Developed countries Just because countries are rich does not necessarily mean that their prison systems are models of good treatment, with no discrimination and conscientious observance of human rights laws. In fact, the CPT, which visits all places of detention in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, finds much that needs changing in the Western European countries and in the relatively less affluent countries of Eastern Europe. 16 ■ A hardening political climate against lawbreakers and the use of imprisonment when treatment would be more appropriate, particularly in connection with the use of illegal drugs, has adversely affected women in the criminal justice system in some developed countries. Developed countries tend to influence the penal policies of developing countries though their aid and also set the agenda of the donor agencies, so those policies unfavourable to gender-sensitive penal reform are exported. Prison populations are increasing in many developed countries with no commensurate increases in resources, so training in the special needs of women and other vulnerable prisoners and programmes for prisoners such as counselling for victims of past abuse are suffering. However, most developed countries have: - Active and relatively well-resourced civil society organisations campaigning for prison reform as well as a range of organisations bringing help and support to prisoners and assisting with their social reintegration. - Welfare systems that ensure prisoners leaving prison, especially women with children, are not left destitute. - Human rights bodies monitor the treatment of those deprived of their liberty and in discrimination. Countries in Europe are bound by European Union anti-discrimination laws and requirements covering gender and sexual orientation and by the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlaws discrimination, and their representatives in the European Parliament take an interest in human rights and anti-discrimination matters.