Concerns regarding the morality and effectiveness of women’s prisons are reflected in the statistics revealing 45% reoffend within a year of being released from prison. Alternatives that help reduce reoffending and keep women safe from further trauma  must be  a priority. Funding is very precarious  for the existing network of women’s centres. It is also sporadic…

On the 30th June 2020, the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons published a report after visiting prisons holding women. It focused on the conditions in two prisons, HMP Send and HMP and YOI Downview, during the coronavirus pandemic. Whilst there were some positives, conditions in these establishment were still unacceptable. For example, prisoners at Send were only given one hour…

Our report documents the harrowing experiences of minoritized women in the criminal justice system. We aim to generate a nation-wide conversation about the urgency of widespread reform. The discrimination that women suffer, particularly those who are BAME, happens at various stages of their journey as defendants. We cannot focus only on the police, only on…

“WE ARE INVISIBLE”: The Experiences of Women in The Criminal Justice System:  The Black Lives Matter campaign in the USA and UK has brought the abominable treatment of black men in the criminal justice system into focus. The View has conducted a survey in order to look at the injustices faced by minoritized women in contact…

In recent years, the ‘refugee crisis’, the Brexit vote, the Windrush scandal, the ‘hostile environment’, conditions in immigration detention centres, and the Covid-19 pandemic have focused attention on the government’s migration policies. It’s common to question the justice of this or that policy, but there remains a widespread assumption that ultimately countries should be free…

Miss Triggs’ situation is familiar to many of us: inaudible, unable to make any impact on those around. When you speak what you say is not valued, while the very same thing said by someone else is heard. Sometimes this is individual – Miss Triggs in particular just does not command her audience. Sometimes it…

Figure 1: Hypatia, a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher. If you ask someone to name some famous philosophers, they will probably give you a list of men: Plato, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, and so on. But there are lots of women doing (great!) philosophy, and there always have been. In recent years, there have been many moves to improve the…

Miranda Fricker: a professor of philosophy The City University of New York (CUNY), whose views we discussed on blame and forgiveness Link Dr Mike Coxhead Email: michael.coxhead@kcl.ac.uk Twitter: @coxheadmike The course at HMP Downview was our first at a women’s prison. Since 2016, Andy West, Andrea Fassolas, and I had delivered our 10-week, introductory philosophy course regularly at Belmarsh. We had also run it…

In 399 BC the philosopher Socrates was executed by the Athenians, for impiety (living an impure life) and corrupting the young. He had a conversation with his friends as he awaited execution in prison – about immortality, about the structure of the universe, about the nature of philosophy. He concludes that he should not be…