Scottish Prisons Assessment and Review of Outcomes for Women (SPAROW): executive summary

Challenges and barriers

8. Constraints, rules and regimes: The constraints, rules and regimes of life within the CCUs impede the implementation of gender-specific and trauma-informed practice. The CCUs operate under the strictures of SPS Prison Rules. The application and enforcement of these can inhibit the stated ethos of the CCUs and constrain the realisation of the vision of the CCUs as constituting a radical change in the way that Scotland manages women in custody. In line with conclusions from other research (Vaswani & Paul 2019; Auty et al. 2022), it is seemingly not possible for a custodial establishment to become fully trauma-informed whilst punishment remains a fundamental element of the prison system. Thus the CCUs remain ‘mini prisons’ at present, retaining many of the features of more traditional prisons and not the radical departure that was envisaged (see Chapter 4 in the full report which outlines the vision and aspirations for the CCUs).

9. Understanding of gender-specific and trauma-informed principles and approaches: Officer understanding of gender-specific and trauma-informed approaches are limited and lack the depth of understanding of women’s gendered needs and trauma experiences that SPS aspire to encourage in staff in the CCUs. Trauma-informed working provides opportunities to improve women’s experiences, improve working environments for officers, increase job satisfaction and reduce stress levels by improving the relationships between officers and women. Yet given the lack of deep understanding of the effects of trauma, and some entrenched stereotypical views about women and their needs, there are variable and limited opportunities for gender-specific and trauma-informed practice, further reducing the ability to create settings conducive to such practice. These findings have important implications for the CCUs and across the women’s estate (see Chapter 8 in the full report).

10. Encouraging dependence: Ongoing power and gender imbalances between women and officers can create challenges for the development of relationships and interactions. Some women were wary of becoming overly reliant on prison officers and spoke of feeling infantilised by officer actions and the language they used towards them. Relatedly women felt that officers tend to ‘micro-manage’ them rather than encouraging them to come to their own decisions or sort out their relationships with other women in the CCU as they would in closed conditions. Encouraging dependence and reliance on officers is at odds with the intentions of the CCU model, and so vigilance is required to prevent over-dependence (see Chapter 7 in the full report).

11. Barriers to building trust: Whilst it is recognised that developing strong relational working is key to the provision of a gender-specific and trauma-informed approach, there are however some disquieting views about how working with women should be done. The conflict between the need for CCUs to maintain custodial boundaries whilst operating a trauma-informed approach is a challenge in terms of building trusting relationships. Close proximity between women and their Personal Officers and the potential for relationship-building, while perhaps meeting the requirements of gender-responsive and trauma-informed practice, was noted to be a useful way of gathering ‘intelligence’ by some officers. Along with the use of cameras throughout the public areas of the buildings, there is no doubt the emphasis on security is prioritised, perhaps in contrast to the aims and objectives of relational approaches to the provision of support. Increasing tensions that emerged over time and the shifts towards a more prison-like regime seemed to coincide with the reduction of individual prison officer autonomy and the growing emphasis on broader Prison Rules (see Chapters 7 & 8 in the full report).

12. Officer training and support: Training provision is considered limited and officers registered concerns about the level of support provided to them from SPS senior management. Trauma-informed practice can be carried out in prison environments by ensuring clear communication, to explain decisions, creating safe spaces for those imprisoned, and by understanding how to minimise power dynamics. Yet officers find it difficult to translate the theoretical to the practical and find clear examples of how to ‘do things differently’. This suggests the need first to be clearer on what this practice means and why it is being introduced, to review and revise gender-specific and trauma-informed training for new and existing staff, improve communication, and prioritise officer wellbeing and support, in order to develop a staff group with the aptitude and skills to deliver on the aims and aspirations of the SPS Strategy for Women in Custody and the CCUs (see Chapters 5, 6 & 8 in the full report).

13. Practical challenges to the implementation of gender-specific and trauma-informed practice: There are practical challenges to implementing gender-specific and trauma-informed practice. The CCUs were designed to house only a small number of women for reasons relating to their strategic purpose, such as being situated within communities, enabling closer working relationships between staff and the women, and responding on a more individual basis to the women’s needs. However, their size did create some barriers to their strategic purpose, which included the mix of women in any one house, and issues that may be experienced as a result. Tensions between women regarding sentence profiles and progression stages undermine efforts to introduce trauma-informed practice (see Chapter 6 in full report).

Other practical challenges include the dual purpose of the Hub space both for visits, and for activities and socialisation between the women residents in the CCU, resulting in some avoidance of this space and reducing the potential of the latter’s purpose (see Chapter 7 in full report).

14. Trauma-informed programmes: Therapeutic, trauma-informed programmes for women to actively engage in their own personal recovery journeys appear to be absent in the CCUs. Instead, women have a support plan interview, followed by monthly support plans, and finally a case conference six to eight weeks before leaving the CCU. These should all identify areas that the women wish or need to address, and plans to do so, but no mention was made of these being trauma-informed, or linked to therapeutic, trauma-informed programmes.

15. Body searching of women: A significant challenge to trauma-informed practice in the CCUs is the continued use of full body searches. This creates additional difficulties for relationship building, the development of trust, and may echo or resonate with traumatic experiences (see Chapters 7 & 8 in the full report).

16. Purposeful activity: Whilst women enjoy some of the activities on offer in the CCUs, women and staff perceive there to be a lack of appealing purposeful activity as compared to closed conditions. Life skills tuition, particularly cooking, is limited. Many women are ‘bored’ and disaffected. There is a risk that, over time, more women withdraw from activities and the life of the CCUs (see Chapter 7 in the full report).

17. Inconsistent messaging and changes of rules: A significant and ongoing challenge to the implementation of gender-specific and trauma-informed approaches is the different understandings or interpretations of what these approaches mean (see Chapter 6 in the full report). This concerns different interpretations by individuals, and interpretation by managers which officers were required to follow. Either way, these resulted in inconsistent practices in the CCUs, which were experienced as confusing and frustrating by officers and created uncertainty and anxiousness as to what was allowed (see Chapter 8 in the full report). This lack of consistency in ‘the rules’ was a key theme across both CCUs; officers considered these to vary depending upon which First Line Manager was on duty. There was also a perception from some that arbitrary rules were being made by senior management who did not really know the women, or the environment of the CCU (see Chapter 7 in the full report).

18. Community access: Contrary to expectations of many officers and most women, community access is only permitted for a relatively small number of women. The numbers gaining community access are much more limited than envisaged in the SPS Strategy for Women, and opportunities for community integration is reduced as a result. This is perhaps the most significant barrier preventing the realisation of the vision for the CCUs. There is a troubled relationship between the risk averse nature of decision-making, which extends beyond operational arrangements within the CCUs to the identification and selection of women for transfer/progress to them. A culture of risk averseness permeates decision-making and can be seen to thwart the intended ethos and stated aims of CCUs (see Chapters 6, 7 & 8 in the full report).

19. Limited throughcare: A notable finding concerns the lack of throughcare opportunities for women. This is a stark difference between the CCUs and closed conditions where throughcare arrangements are generally considered more structured. Ensuring that women have access to housing, training, employment opportunities, and social welfare support upon release is essential for successful re-integration into the community (see Chapter 7 in the full report).

Overall, there are many positives in regard to the establishment and development of the CCUs, but there are differences between the expectations of officers and residents and the realities of life in the CCUs. Thus the findings are promising, but there is still work to be done to fulfil the overall ambition of the CCUs.