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J U LY 2 0 1 9

Report written by:Sofia Buncy and Ishtiaq Ahmed

Community-basedsolutions for Muslimwomen post-prison

Sisters in Desistance

TABLE OFCONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Report Co-authors Profiles: Sofia Buncy & Ishtiaq Ahmed

Foreword: Zulfiqar Karim - CfM

Context: Tebussum Rashid - BTEG

Authors Introduction

Beneficiaries Foreword

Developing a Community Resettlement Hub

Intersectionality of issues affecting Muslim women

Thematic Context

The Fragility of Honour

Family: The Ripple Effects of Muslim Female Incarceration

Faith: A Powerful Catalyst for Rehabilitation

Special Considerations for TACT Prisoners

Mental Health: Prisoner of the Mind

Institutional Inequalities

Recommendations and Conclusion

4

5-6

7

8

9-10

11-12

13-15

16-17

18

19-21

22-26

27-29

30

31-33

34-35

36-38

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our service users/contributors and their families. At the same time, we would like to thank other Muslim women with lived experience who were brave enough to come forward and share their stories and campaign for change with us. Their contribution has been invaluable and integral to the development of a community–based desistence model without which this report may not have come into fruition. We would also like to express our appreciation for HMP and YOI New Hall and HMP Askham Grange Prisons who have played a crucial role in allowing us to understand and trial a culturally informed through the gate model. In addition, we also recognise this important piece of work would not be possible were it not for the support and buy-in from Aziz Foundation, Penny Appeal and Lloyds Bank Foundation. Thank you for believing in our vision. A special thank you and acknowledgement also goes to those individuals and organisations who have travelled on this journey with us being;

• Mohammad Ibrahim (Khidmat Centres)

• Zulfiqar Karim (CfM)

• Ray Douglas

• Ferzana Dakri (The Straight Path Resettlement Project)

• Tebassum Rashid (BTEG)

• Myira Khan (Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network)

• CLINKS

• Prison Reform Trust

Above all, we sincerely acknowledge the much needed help of Waheed Ali, Aasma Akhtar, Sana Javine, Nagina Akhtar and Rabia Azhar for their consistent support in the completion of this report.

5

ReportCo-author

Sofia Buncy

Sofia Buncy is one of the UK’s leading practitioners and thought leaders on the experiences of Muslim women in the Criminal Justice System (CJS). She was the ground-breaking researcher and co-author of the 2014 report titled 'Muslim Women in Prison- Second Chance: Fresh Horizons'1. This was the first ever report into the experiences of Muslim women in British prisons. This report won Sofia a coveted Butler Trust award in 2017. She was subsequently awarded an Asian Woman of Achievement Award in 2017 in the social and humanitarian category.

Sofia is the founder and National Coordinator of the Muslim Women in Prison Rehabilitation Project. This is a culturally informed resettlement programme which supports women in rebuilding their lives post prison release and back into the community. She has drawn on her extensive experience of over 15 years of working with grassroots communities in the youth work, female empowerment, interfaith and community development spheres. Much of Sofia’s practice is also underpinned by her professional readings in Behavioural Sciences and Professional Studies: Youth and Community.

Due to her specialist knowledge on this particular aspect of BAME women, as well as her innovation, she has been asked to contribute to several national steering groups. She has also submitted to calls for evidence such as The Lammy Review2 and Lord Farmer’s3 review, as well as media and more recently academia to enhance understanding in this area of need.

Sofia, alongside Ishtiaq Ahmed, has contributed to the formation of a visible and community owned grassroots model around desistance and community led solutions for Muslim women and other minority women coming out of prison and back to communities. Once again, they have both pioneered on a solution focussed approach. This is in the hope of modelling good practice for community and mainstream CJS providers and policy makers on how to be more inclusive and culturally and faith compliant.

1 Buncy, S. and Ahmed, I. (2014) Muslim Women in Prison. Second Chance: Fresh Horizons, Huddersfield: HPCA

2 Lammy, D. (2017) The Lammy Review, London: Ministry of Justice3 Farmer, M. (2019) The Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders’ Family and other Relationships to

Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime, London: Ministry of Justice

Sofia Buncy

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ReportCo-author

Ishtiaq Ahmed

Ishtiaq Ahmed has vast experience nearing four decades of campaigning on equality issues, community development and interfaith. Ishtiaq’s portfolio includes him having been the Head of Bradford Metropolitan Council for Voluntary Services, Director of Doncaster and Bradford Racial Equality Councils and amongst these, holding a number of senior equality positions within Bradford Metropolitan and Calderdale Borough Councils.

Ishtiaq is currently the Strategic Policy Advisor for Bradford Council for Mosques, a role which he combines with that of the Strategic Policy and Project Development Officer for the Khidmat Centres.

Ishtiaq’ s involvement with Bradford Council for Mosques, an umbrella organisation for over 100 Mosques and educational faith settings throughout Bradford, goes back to the organisation’s inception in 1981. Utilising this experience, he has supported the establishment of a number of Council for Mosques around the country.

Through his working career, Ishtiaq has tirelessly campaigned on equality issues. He has helped to establish a wide range of pioneering community based and led initiatives, strongly believing that the empowerment of communities is key to challenging and addressing prevalent inequalities in and around us.

Over the years Ishtiaq has authored and co-authored a number of significant reports, including:

• Healthier Lives: Masajid Engagement Programme (2015)

• Muslim Women in Prison: Second Chance-Fresh Horizons (2014)Sofia Buncy and Ishtiaq Ahmed

• The Changing Landscape: Impact on the Education of Muslim Children (2013)Ishtiaq Ahmed

• Children Do Matter (2011)Ishtiaq Ahmed and Azra Riasat

• Council for Mosques: 30 Years of Unparalleled Service to the Community (2011)Ishtiaq Ahmed

• Call for Engagement (2009) Ishtiaq Ahmed

Ishtiaq Ahmed

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Foreword:President of Bradford Council for Mosques (CfM)

Zulfiqar KarimZulfiqar Karim

(Bradford Council for Mosques was established in 1981, as an umbrella organisation for Mosques and Supplementary Faith Schools throughout Bradford).

As the President of Council for Mosques (CfM), it is with much pride that I commend this report to you, for a number of pertinent reasons:

I. The disproportionate representation of Muslims in British prisons and the relative absence of conversations around this issue. I am very much hoping that this report will instigate and open up meaningful discussions between the community and providers on this very important subject matter.

II. I admit that before Sofia and Ishtiaq’ s work on the Muslim Women in Prison Project through Khidmat Centres, I was also somewhat distanced from the scale of the problem and inherent challenges that it entailed. It is only through their perseverance and balanced approach that my attention was engaged. I hope that this report will do the same for others.

III. The report describes what a community led and culturally informed rehabilitation model looks like for Muslim women coming back to the community, however, the template outlined here is equally transferable to develop a similar framework for Muslim male prisoners.

I sincerely hope that the CfM constituency, CJS and community based providers will utilise the information within this report, to make crucial systematic changes in the way in which community rehabilitation is addressed.

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Context:Black Training and EnterpriseGroup (BTEG)

This report is not only timely but also to point. The voices of the women speak volumes and will hopefully influence policy makers, politicians, families and communities to make real and lasting changes.

Reading the contributions and findings, it does raise the question why the issues facing Muslim women are going unnoticed. The messages in this report are not new and were in-fact raised in the earlier report in 2014 also written by Sofia Buncy and Ishtiaq Ahmed.4 However, BTEG is optimistic that this report ‘through the eyes of the women’ will be taken seriously and trigger conversations, discussions and change in institutions and communities.

Community based desistence must play an integral part in preventing and reducing the inequalities faced by Muslim women both in prison and on release. The report highlights the complex and multi- layered intersecting issues affecting Muslim women and so strongly advocates for the need for a joined-up approach for better outcomes.

The CJS in particular, needs to have a clear commitment to questioning, challenging and addressing the inequalities facing Muslim women, whilst understanding the complexities of making systematic changes.

At BTEG we believe communities and community-based organisations, with the involvement of former prisoners can play a substantial role in supporting desistence and changing the experiences for the women at any point of the CJS. The recommendations make a strong call out to communities and agencies to take the lead in change, both in mind-set and action.

We hope that the recommendations in the report will be considered, and that action plans and strategies incorporating the recommendations are developed and implemented.

Tebussum RashidTebussum Rashid

BTEG Deputy CEO

4 Buncy, S. and Ahmed, I. (2014) Muslim Women in Prison. Op Cit.

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AUTHORS INTRODUCTION

In 2014, we co-authored the very first report into the experiences of Muslim women5 in two UK prisons namely HMP/YOI New Hall and HMP Askham Grange. At the time, there was no particular reference to or visibility of Muslim women and their experiences throughout the prison system. Hence, we were uncertain as to how the report would be received by the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and the local communities from which these women came from.

In some respects, this was a daring and risky venture on our part, given the sensitivities surrounding Muslim women and offending. In the Muslim community there was either no awareness that the issue existed or a refusal to acknowledge that this was even possible. At the same time, for providing agencies, Muslim women were perceived as a minority within a minority and thus not meriting attention and specialist support. From our experience, there was also a very real fear on the part of providers of unconscious bias when dealing with culturally and socially taboo areas. Perhaps this was somewhat exacerbated by the negativity surrounding the Muslim community, the spike in public Islamophobia6 and the lack of understanding around the disproportionately of Muslims in prisons.

What was very clear from our findings was that Muslim women prisoners experienced an intersectionality of inequalities on the premise of gender, race, faith and culture over and above disadvantages in poverty, health and geography. This was something which we felt was overlooked, even by women’s providers. Evidently, Muslim women did not neatly fit the traditional profile of women offenders. This was compounded by their experiences in family and community life but further reinforced by lack of culturally appropriate and tailored support within the prison establishment and beyond.

The majority of women feared life beyond the prison gate and back into the community. In some respects, this was no different from other women but for Muslim women it brought into play cultural and social factors unique to their experiences. Women often spoke of an unfair community sentence in contrast to the liberal and sympathetic treatment that Muslim men are often given on release. As Muslim practitioners from that community, we understood the complex interplay between social stigma, cultural taboos, and the notion of honour. We recognised the aforementioned manifest themselves in terms of acceptance or rejection in the broader context of gender roles and expectations associated with them. This partly explained the lack of ownership and practical support from family, community and community institutions post prison release.

5 Buncy, S. and Ahmed, I (2014) Muslim Women in Prison. Op Cit.6 Tell MAMA (2018) Gendered Anti-Muslim Hatred and Islamophobia, London: Faith Matters

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Following the first report, we found ourselves at a crossroads of whether we could leave our findings on the desks of providers and the community in the hope that something would be done to move forward its recommendations. However, we felt this was not a realistic option. In the absence of any form of concerted effort to find solutions to community re-entry for Muslim women prisoners, we decided to develop a community led resettlement model to demonstrate what culturally informed and appropriate delivery looks like.

This however required a community based organisation to take ownership and be receptive to the plight and journey of Muslim women in the CJS. Naturally, an embedded community organisation working with this client group would help to prevent women being further blamed and ostracised. Essentially this was about instigating a cultural shift in community-based practice but, at the same time, modelling a culturally competent and compatible provision which other Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) and mainstream providers could learn from. Bradford was our natural choice due it location, size of the Muslim community and the willingness of the Khidmat Centres’ management to allow us to pilot this project.

This report attempts to capture the learning which we have developed from building a community-based re-entry model for Muslim women coming back to Bradford and the surrounding areas. It brings a fresh perspective to Muslim women in the CJS as it is led by service users. We have intentionally involved Muslim women who have benefitted from the support channeled through this model in order to achieve authenticity as well as giving them an opportunity to shape re-entry back into the community. Essentially, this process has entailed empowering Muslim women to take control and define what works for them.

We expect this report to trigger change for providers to better understand the plight of Muslim women whilst in prison and on release. In doing so, enable them to develop and put in place more inclusive and culturally competent support, which should involve empowering and recognising the role of community providers. We strongly suggest that without community ownership and lead, deep seated and systematic issues will remain unresolved.

The delivery model outlined in this report is set out in the broader prism of BAME women with particular and specialist focus on the faith and cultural community of these women. However, the underlying principles of this approach and the lessons learned may easily be transferred to other BAME women and more so to the Muslim male prison population. Alarmingly, the Muslim prison population at present stands at 16% of the total prison population of England and Wales in comparison to 5% of the general Muslim population7.

AUTHORSINTRODUCTION...

7 Lammy, D. (2017) The Lammy Review, London: Ministry of Justice

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We are honoured to be asked to contribute to this report which tries to capture our experiences as Muslim women in prison coming back into the community. Often other people talk about us without allowing us to put forward our own stories. This is the first time that we are being given a safe and confidential opportunity to tell our stories on our terms.

It has taken a lot of courage on our part to make our journeys public. We are constantly told by those close to us not to talk about our painful experiences. If it wasn’t for the Muslim Women in Prison (MWIP) project and the genuine care and hand holding of Sofia and Ishtiaq, we would not be in a position to tell our stories.

What you are about to read may be uncomfortable and challenging but it is honest and based on our realities. What we say may help to take the lid off the conspiracy of silence all around us. We hope institutions and those organisations working in and around the prisons examine if they are culturally ready and prepared to address the challenges we face. Whose eyes and position are they looking at us through and how relevant is this to our reality?

The through the gate support that has been provided to us by MWIP has worked because it was individually tailored to our personal circumstances. We felt that our cultural and faith needs were recognised when putting in place support plans. We also felt the project team understood our individual and family circumstances when agreeing practical plans to deal with our fragile situations. This often involved MWIP talking to other services who worked with us to take into consideration the unwritten values and norms which control our family and community life. You can’t just pick up a book and read what these are. It is only if you are born in this community that you have real insight into how ingrained and strong these are.

Our situation is made that much more worse because we are women and within our community being a woman caught up in crime is one of the most unacceptable things that can happen to a family, regardless of the reasons. There is a more forgiving attitude towards Muslim men who offend. For this reason, the community is less confident in acknowledging and

BENEFICIARIES FOREWORD

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taking responsibility for the support that women like us need. We were surprised to see that a community organisation was willing to take the risk to openly welcome us and help us to move forward in overcoming the hurdles and challenges that we talk more about in this report.

We would love to see this model replicated in other parts of the country for Muslim women but at the same time many of our sisters from other faith and cultural groups have similar needs and we have seen them access this support service.

Through this project we have resettled back in the community and are being reconnected with families and friends. Others have moved on to independent living through employment. Some still continue to work through personal issues, demons and loneliness with help and support from people at the centre who ‘get them’, genuinely care and where they aren’t just a case number.

Thank you to Khidmat Centres for making somewhere safe and welcoming in the community to come back to and most of all for showing us that all women matter.

BENEFICIARIESFOREWORD...

The project has supported 55 beneficiaries over the course of the pilot project. Of these, 8 contributed to the writing of this report. Finding were based on casework and focus groups.

13

From the offset, we recognised that developing any framework for a community-based re-entry programme for Muslim women prisoners required a host organisation from within the Muslim community. There needed to be a willingness from an embedded community organisation to take head-on responsibility given the sensitivities surrounding Muslim women’s incarceration. This was important because any resettlement programme for Muslim women needed to be reflective of their everyday reality and their social and cultural context. Having cultural awareness and competency was deemed essential to navigate these beneficiaries’ situations.

Basing this model within the Muslim community was also about enabling communities to recognise and take ownership for this stigmatised area of work. In doing so, we hoped to develop a model of practice for women wishing to return back to communities but also to demonstrate to other providers what a culturally compliant model looks like in practice.

During our community scoping, we were alarmed to find that there was no workable model of through the gate community re-entry for Muslim prisoners generally. There were some isolated pieces of research and good practice but nothing that was holistic, community based, and financially sustainable. This was extremely worrying considering Muslim prisoners make up approximately 16%8 of the prison population, a gross over representation of the general Muslim population which stands at 5%. Within this, Muslim women prisoners did not feature

Khidmat CentresDeveloping a CommunityResettlement Hub

8 Lammy, D. (2017) The Lammy Review, London: Ministry of Justice

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prominently on the radar of the community or providers. Consequently, we felt it essential to develop a workable resettlement model for Muslim women prisoners, which in due course may also inform good practice for the re-entry of Muslim male prisoners back into the community.

When identifying a community centre for locating a Muslim women’s resettlement hub, the following considerations were paramount for us:

I. An organisation which was not fearful of being openly associated with an issue which unfortunately carries social and cultural stigma in the community.II. Be rooted within the community and perceived as a holistic provider of facilities and services with a degree of integrity.III. An organisation which recognised and valued cultural and religious sensitivities.IV. Demonstrated a strong commitment to tackling social injustice and inequalities.V. Embodied a degree of cultural competency and welcomed change.VI. Had a strong commitment to partnership working.VII. Had open, non-judgmental and yet risk assessed access to facilities and services.

Many may feel that the natural choice for locating this project would have been a women’s centre. However, we felt that there were practical reasons for basing the project in a holistic setting with women’s services as an integral part of the overall provision. This was also to avoid our provision being dismissed by the community as something on the fringes, a risk we could not take considering that we wanted the community to take collective ownership for this issue within the Islamic 'Ummah' (community) framework.

We also had a realization that family mediation and reconciliation would be pivotal to our work and therefore we required a space which was accepting of this by all parties.

We needed a community organisation which in many aspects was self-sustainable and had multiple delivery strands, thus, having the capacity to carry our project through its pilot trial if faced by financial adversity. This was important because we are only too aware of the funding challenges facing women’s groups and within that the acute disadvantages experienced by BAME women’s groups.

On our assessment, Khidmat Centres went a long way to meeting the above criteria. The organisation had a reputation for autonomous and non-judgmental working. They had proven experience of working with vulnerable groups who may be considered marginalised in the community such as adults with learning disabilities, elderly people and vulnerable women. It was clear that Khidmat Centres understood the notion of safe space, confidentiality and risk and that the management was open to trialing new methods of practice.

Khidmat CentresDeveloping a CommunityResettlement Hub...

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Khidmat Centres are also firmly rooted within the network of Bradford Council for Mosques. We took the view that by placing the project within Khidmat Centres it would help to prompt engagement of Muslim faith institutions with post-release issues and concerns of Muslim women. This would also instigate an additional conversation which was required around the general disproportionality of British Muslims in prison.

Khidmat Centres’ existing service delivery complemented the vision and practical needs which beneficiaries felt they would require support with post release. These were services such as: specialist benefits and housing advisors, on-site short courses for adults, employment hub and volunteering opportunities.

As practitioners we identified that integrated in-house services were crucial in countering the initial vulnerability, confidence and fear that clients harbored on release. Another attractive aspect of the Khidmat Centres was that it had a 7-day-a-week inclusive community delivery operation. Above all, the centre offered women the inclusiveness they craved on release. As one of our service users subsequently commented:

“There’s no big neon sign above the door saying this centre is just for offenders, we could literally be coming in here for anything like advice, a class or for the gym”. [Beneficiary 3]

Whilst Khidmat Centres fulfilled much of the criteria required for a such a project to flourish, we recognized that certain developments were needed to adjust and develop the organisation’s service delivery to accommodate the needs and sensitivities of Muslim women prisoners, supporting agencies as well as the existing service provision.

Khidmat CentresDeveloping a CommunityResettlement Hub...

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Inte

rsec

tiona

lity

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aff

ectin

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uslim

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with

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17

• W

omen

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ar o

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conn

ectin

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ith

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ren

and

how

muc

h th

ese

rela

tions

hip

s ha

ve b

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seve

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olle

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. no

long

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fit

mot

her

by f

amily

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now

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ill b

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ken

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k w

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ondi

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’. A

ltern

ativ

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re a

re a

lso

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latio

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bo’

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Project report

18

The grid of issues on the preceding page is a culmination of input from our service users as well as our practitioners and mentors who have provided one to one support on release. It is a fairly comprehensive but not exhaustive list of interconnected and multilayered issues that impact on Muslim women post-prison and their capacity to move on in life.

As a collective, we were mindful when writing this section not only to focus on the dynamics of institutional disadvantages these women face from providers working in this space. But, also to provide unique insights into the deep-rooted cultural governance around Muslim women prisoners, making their journeys different and unique which sets them apart from other women.

We decided to hone in on five key areas of interventions that our beneficiaries felt were central to their successful rehabilitation and which set them apart from other women.

1. The fragility of honour and Muslim women’s criminality.

2. Family: The ripple effects of female incarceration on Muslim families.

3. Faith: A powerful catalyst for rehabilitation.

4. Mental Health: Prisoner of the mind.

5. Institutional Inequalities.

In unpacking these key areas, our intention is not to apportion blame but to contextualize the interplay of cultural, faith, ethnicity and gender and institutional inequality dynamics and how these shape the provision of support (or lack of) in the CJS and post-release arena. Without understanding and mitigating these concerns and challenges, there cannot be a robust, culturally informed and equitable provision for this, or any other group of women, with similar attributes either inside prison or past the gate.

Thematic context:Interrelated themes which make Muslim women prisoners plight different

19

The fragilityof honour and Muslim women’s criminality

Cultural ContextThe notion of Izzat (honour) features strongly across the UK’s Muslim communities who within themselves are diverse in nature. Its intensity may vary from one Muslim ethnic group to another. This may depend on factors such as; interpretation of faith, cultural influences, tribal norms, social and economic conditions, educational outlooks and exposure to ‘outside’ cultures. It is important we do not generalise as understanding of Izzat varies through diverse Muslim cultural and ethnic groups.

What we have found through our casework is that for many of the women, Izzat factored strongly in their life and treatment. In a number of cases, women have been able to go back to families. In other cases, moving forward meant going independent or relocating. Therefore, our delivery response had to be mindful of the realities of these women.

Within the South Asian Muslim communities (from which the majority of our beneficiaries came from) Izzat refers to the social standing and reputation of both an individual and his/her family. Both of which are intrinsically linked and have a symbiotic relationship. Certain practices reinforce Izzat such as; obedient conduct, achieving good education, wealth or marriage into another family of either similar or higher standing. Izzat is also factored in maintaining the ‘purity’ of family lineage. It was strongly felt by some of our clients that the Islamic faith is sometime unjustifiably used to maintain family norms and traditions which are based more on cultural and patriarchal constructs.

At the same time from our beneficiaries point of view, Izzat is very fragile and can easily be breached. It is perceived more so by actions of female members of the family. This plays out in different ways for example being disobedient to the will and wishes of the family. Furthermore, regarding what may or may not be deemed suitable in terms of education, career, marriage choices, dress code and disconformity to the traditional assigned gender roles. Expectations regarding male members in some of these aspects are very different. They are expected and encouraged to attain education and have a career. Onus is also placed upon them being financially independent, having the ability to provide for family, and to develop their social and community life. More importantly, male members are seen as the ‘guardians’ and ‘protectors’ of the family Izzat. Women are expected to comply with these gender divide expectations.

It was felt by our beneficiaries that in practice, women are expected to uphold Izzat more stringently, whereas there seems to be a relaxed and forgiving attitude towards their male

Turban - a symbol of honour and respect

Project report

20

counterparts. Thus, suggesting that they are almost expected to flounder these rules and get away with it. This contradictory view of things is also extended to the treatment of male/female criminality where there appears to be a more accepting attitude towards male offenders. Something that also plays out in other communities .

It is important to understand that Izzat sits in a very complex network of extended family, kinship, caste and overseas generational networks. Defamation of the family name, particularly by a female going to prison, can be the ultimate calamity on the good name, status and the social standing of the family. This can potentially result in marginalisation of the family by others i.e. people no longer wanting to associate with them. Worse still, people may not wish to sustain existing or new marriage ties into the family, thus ruining family aspirations.

The 'breach' of the family honour code often results in the internalisation of ‘shame’ for Muslim women prisoners. In our experience, this impacts on the woman’s sense of self-worth, identity, and emotional and mental wellbeing. This essentially contributes towards a prisoner’s state of mind pre-release as anxiety and the unpredictability of the situation she will face post release, becomes a reality.

It is important to note that in practical terms honour is carried by the family externally and the burden of shame is carried by the individual. We have found that families are really confounded by the dilemma of ‘how’ and ‘what’ to do for fear of compromising social standing and integrity. People were fearful of wanting to support a female ex- prisoner, particularly where it could be viewed as condoning her criminality.

“What would people say if we took her back? I have other daughters of marriageable age. Who would want to ask for their hand knowing she lives in the house”. [A concerned father]

“People are usually very unforgiving if you’re a Muslim woman coming out of prison. A lot of the time, we are cut off by family and community so no one else wants to bother with us either! Men are just able to come back out and fit in no matter what they’ve done”. [Beneficiary 6]

The fragilityof honour and Muslim women’scriminality...

21

HonourExamples of Interventionsin this area by theproject team:

• Provided family mediation where requested by the client. This has involved:- Either making a direct approach or being linked through a third party, for example a local

Imam or another accepted community figure.

- Facilitating communication with the family, this often involves speaking a community language and introduction of our credentials and services.

- Working with the family around their position on the client, her criminality and return as well as putting across fears and anxieties of the client.

- Supporting the family to work through their family pressures and concerns. This may involve taking into confidence other close members of the family to alleviate ‘pulls’ and ‘pushes’ particularly on parents (this is a delicate and sensitive balancing act).

- Keeping the communication open and ongoing between the family and other agencies such as probation and other allied agencies which sometime can be fraught due to misinformation and expectations.

• Helping to facilitate faith mediation between the client and the family around the issue of honour and forgiveness. This can involve intervention from an Imam (male faith teacher) or Aalimah (female faith teacher). We have found initial sessions may have to take place at the Khidmat Centres which is a neutral space outside of the home and mosque.

• We provide a ‘family to family’ mentoring scheme, where families who have accepted a woman back post-prison, speak to new families in this situation about how they managed to work through challenges and dilemmas around acceptance.

• Supporting women to relocate where family ties are severed andsetting up an appropriate support structure to maintain some level of contact for the client.

• Developing access to structural support from agencies around the threat of honour- based hate and violence. What worked particularly well, was the one-to-one Police surgeries with an asian female officer. This allowed women to voice their concerns and receive practical advice around safeguarding. Khidmat Centres is also a registered Hate Crime Centre working closely with Bradford Hate Crime Alliance.

• On a wider scale, Khidmat Centres proactively work to profile the work of the project within the community and media to enable direct conversations around female criminality and community support.

In implementing the above, we are mindful of licencing conditions and other restrictions.

Client one-to-one with PC Fiz Ahmed

One-to-one planning forpost-release

Project report

22

The family is at the core of Muslim life around which relations and expectations are formed. This acts as a ‘glue’ that holds things together, a protective and caring unit, lending continuity to tradition and regulating change.

Muslim family ties are not confined to the UK but are extended overseas to countries of origin. These ties and influences are equally important and highly valued. How frequently do we hear from parents that we have to consult and take into account the view and sentiments of grandparents, brothers/ sisters and relatives living abroad, as “this is about our family”? Marriage in the past and present continues to serve to consolidate family ties and to preserve roles. For most families, purity of lineage remains an important consideration when deciding on marriage of their family member. Although we are seeing its potency is in decline, the undercurrents continue to strongly linger.

Muslim families see it as their duty to protect the ‘good’ family name in terms of its status and standing within the broader extended network of lineage and community. They display an intricately woven set of relationships and social dynamics based around tradition, faith and culture. Historically, family was, and continues in some aspects, to be a vital economic unit providing an essential welfare. It is a kind of safety network. In this context, roles of individuals are very much set and defined, each knowing his/ her position and responsibilities. By and large, interdependency of family members’ roles has contributed to the longevity and relevance of the family as a unit. Therefore, Muslim families present a complex and intriguing set of scenarios and dynamics which need to be understood, appreciated and navigated through. Tradition and change are intrinsically interwoven into a complex web of healthy and not so healthy relationships and expectations.

We find that the social and economic scenarios for the Muslim community in Britain have evolved. These are helped by economic opportunities, education and exposure to other ways of life. This has reduced the level of interdependency of family members on each other. The welfare state has also replaced the survival safety network, which historically was provided by the family.

This transition from tradition to new is full of inherent challenges; how much of the tradition should we keep? How much of the new change should we embrace? Is there a happy medium between the old and new way of life? We have found that these are some of the real dilemmas and challenges that are being experienced in a multi-generational family set-up. Sometimes these family set-ups can comprise of up to four/five generations and migrant patterns.

Recent research has shown the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family ties to prevent reoffending and reduce intergenerational crimes9. Our work has also clearly shown the value

Family:The ripple effects of femaleincarceration on Muslim families

9 Farmer, L. (2019) The Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders’ Family and other Relationships to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime. London

23

Family:The ripple effects of female incarceration on Muslim families...

of family connections. Where families were able to do the hand holding role, the women’s sense of isolation and abandonment was considerably reduced also giving them hope for reconciliation back into the family life after being released.

However, our experiences also indicate that even where families are relatively liberal in their acceptance of women’s criminality, there is reluctance to maintain a regular visible contact for the fear of blighting their social standing and adding to their shame.

For example, one of our clients was welcomed by her family, but she felt she had to relocate with her children and husband in order to avoid unforgiving community gossip and slurs against her family. In a close-knit community and social circles this can prove to be extremely damning.

In some cases, license conditions may prevent a woman from returning to her family home or even to the same area/ neighbourhood (particularly where safeguarding issues are involved). This makes any family connectivity/ conciliation very difficult. In other cases, women do not wish to return to their families/ homes where they had experienced difficult backgrounds of abuse, violence and coercion. Many women at the time felt they could not disclose these matters.

We have also found that many families are unable to navigate their way around the criminal justice set up and/or prison bureaucracy. This situation becomes more problematic with limited English language skills and unawareness of systems and related protocols. Supporting families in this respect, is also a key strand of our work to facilitate connectivity.

The above scenarios factored very strongly in the life experiences of our beneficiaries particularly in their journey post prison. Their capacity to re-adjust back into family and community life was impacted especially where family links had been severed or distanced. We also found examples of children being kept away to protect them from the influence of a perceived ‘bad mother’ who had been to prison. In other cases, members of family desired to retain or establish contact but were held back by the fear of backlash and being held accountable by others in the family. This appears to be linked to ‘shame’ and cultural ideas of tarnishing family honour.

Project report

24

Family:The ripple effects of femaleincarceration on Muslim families...

“I’m livin’ all alone, but I’ve got a job and I’m studying on the side. One of the only real reminders I’ve got of my children is their handprints on the glass of my door. I can’t bring myself to wipe it. My children live with my parents 5 minutes away, but I’m not allowed to see them ‘cos my mum doesn’t want me to see them… My dad sometimes comes to see me!”. [Beneficiary 2]

The fact that some families did not understand the system, its bureaucracy and protocols, did not help their efforts to retain relationships with prisoners.

“We wanted to visit our daughter in prison, but we didn’t know how to go about it. There’s nobody in the community that we know of, to talk to and ask for advice. We are told there is nobody who looks like us to help us when we get there. Our English isn’t too great and we hear when we get to prison, we will be searched and they take the dogs out on you… If we don’t understand something or get into a problem there, would there be anybody to help?”. [A Sikh family]

Amongst all this, there were also encouraging examples of parents welcoming and embracing their daughters on their return which was very brave on their part and heartening to see.

“She did something wrong. We all make mistakes. We are not angels. Our faith tells us to forgive and move on. After all, she is our daughter. If we don’t care for her who else will? We can’t leave her on streets. She needs a second chance and we will give her that.”[A mother]

The reverberations of maternal imprisonment on Muslim children One of the most profound and overlooked findings from our pilot research was the devastation of maternal incarceration on the children of Muslim mothers. Once again, this sat within the complexities of family cultural shame and the burden of children carrying and internalising this trauma. In recent times, there has been academic research done in the area of the impact of maternal imprisonment on children but nothing specific to Muslim children. This area warrants further

25

Family:The ripple effects of female incarceration on Muslim families...

research considering Muslim women are disproportionately represented forming almost 6%10

of the overall female estate and over 35% of the BAME women's prison population. One of the reasons for this amnesia may be the assumption that the extended family networks within the Muslim community may come into play when a mother is imprisoned. Often time, this is true, however in our experience of working with these children there are particular unrecognised traumas:

• Concealment – There were occasions where children were not told the truth of their mother’s incarceration - perhaps as a form of protection. Instead they were told something which the family may deem more palatable such as ‘Your mother has gone abroad’ or ‘Your mum is in hospital’. However, sometimes children learnt this was not the truth from other sources.

• Misconceptions - The notion that because children were being looked after by extended family, they will have the same duty of care which would have been provided by their mother. As one young man told us:

“I felt like I was in the way. My aunty had her own children to take care. So, I looked for a family elsewhere, where I wasn’t in the way. It just happened I found that on the streets”.[A teenage son]

Where this is the case, we have to be vigilant of the risks for children’s’ physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing.

• Transference of shame on children- The marring of Muslim women as a consequence of having offended, coupled with the invisibility of conversations around Muslim women in the CJS inevitably has a silencing impact. The transference of this silence and shame onto the children of women prisoners is detrimental to their wellbeing as well as their physiological and psychological maturation. The lack of understanding around this issue has also meant a lack of appropriate interventions.

In consideration of the above, there is an urgent need for faith based and culturally sensitive counselling for children, where counsellors are trained to work and understand the complexity and intersectionality of faith, culture, ethnicity, age and gender.

10 Table 1.5, Ministry of Justice (2018) Offender management statistics quarterly. Prison population 31 March 2019, London: Ministry of Justice

Project report

26

Family:Examples of Intervention in this area by the project team...

• Making initial contact with families where there was no existing link with the client.

• Explaining to families about systems or protocols where they wished to establish a link but had little knowledge of how the system works or where to reach out for help i.e. how to access a prison for visits.

• Talking to families about imminent release, licence conditions and women who had to go to Approved Premises instead of going home.

• Acting as a point of contact for children to visit mothers instead of in a clinical social care setting. We had positive feedback about being a community- based setting and thus less stigmatised than contact centres.

• Supporting children: Providing a safe space for children to talk about the stigma of having had a parent in prison. This often meant using a neutral space, such as Khidmat Centres as opposed to the home environment.

• Supporting school appeals to get children back into education. We identified a number of children who were being ‘home-schooled,’ or on waiting lists to be put in a school (especially for families who had moved into the area). These children were clearly under the radar and suffering educationally. We signposted a number of these to our weekend tuition club.

• Supporting young people to gain employment via our on-site job shop.

• Khidmat centres youth workers/play workers delivered a key role in acting as role models and mentors to children of female prisoners, especially important where there was absent fathers.

• Providing interventions for families to share their dilemmas and concerns.

In implementing the above, we are mindful of licencing conditions and other restrictions.

27

Faith:A powerful catalyst forrehabilitation

Faith for Muslims is central to their self-understanding and their identity. It governs all aspects of life from food, dress code, moral conduct to family life. The Muslim faith is both a private and public affair. Even those who may be relaxed about their daily faith practices, in times of adversity, readily turn to their faith for solace and comfort as a spiritual companion and guide. Our beneficiaries frequently talked about how their faith helped them to cope with their time while incarcerated and how their connection with their faith helped them to keep their emotional and mental togetherness. Many of our beneficiaries carry with them this new sense of faith on release. For them, faith is a major catalyst in moving forward post–release, enabling them to understand and reconcile their difficult personal histories. This is more so the case with those that have come back to the Islamic faith. Through our work, we have also found that our ‘revert’ sisters’ experience a more pronounced set of challenges and dilemmas. In some cases, they may have severed their links with their families on confirmation of their Islamic faith. At the same time, they may not fit into the faith- cultural prism of the heritage communities as well as suffering institutional inequalities and hostilities. In many senses, from what we have seen, these women have a heightened sense of vulnerability and exclusion.

Generally, Muslim women found it difficult to reconcile their faith with their life experiences. There was a strong sense of questioning and frustrated feeling that their faith was about repentance, tolerance and forgiveness yet some of their experiences in terms of their families, friends and community was not in keeping with these values. Their faith was telling them one thing, but their experiences were the total opposite of this. They could not make sense of the faith and cultural overlap, not fully understanding and discerning faith-cultural conflict.

“A lot of times it feels like we are living our culture and not our faith. My experiences are that faith is about forgiveness, but the culture is about never letting you forget your mistake”. [Beneficiary 7]

“It’s easier for God to forgive you then it is our community!!”. [Beneficiary 1]

“If you are Muslim and your faith is visible, you just get labelled an’ dismissed”.[Beneficiary 3]

Project report

28

Faith:A powerful catalyst forrehabilitation...

“In the present climate of negativity around Muslims, carrying our faith identity is a liability”. [Beneficiary 11]

“Where are we supposed to turn? The community we have joined doesn’t seem to accept us and the one we left behind doesn’t want to know us either”. [Beneficiary 4]

Equally, our experience through casework is that we have found that many agencies are not faith confident and find faith as somewhat of a distraction. Historically, most agencies apply a secular model in their approach thinking that faith is a private matter. This may also be because faith is intangible and its outputs and outcomes are not easily measurable. Furthermore, at this current juncture through the lens of security, the Islamic faith is viewed as a threat and therefore not of benefit. As practitioners, we believe that there is an under documented area of research for rehabilitation through the Islamic concepts of Tauba (repentance) and Mughfara (forgiveness).

Our work demonstrates that there is a definite value in engaging community faith institutions and building their capacity to channel faith based support post-release. MWIP’s strength is that we are able to mobilise faith support through our close proximity with the Bradford Council for Mosques network. This is helped by the fact CfM’s engagement and development is channel through Khidmat centres. We recognise that this is not the experience of all providers11 and thus warrants work around building the understanding and capacity of Muslim community-based faith institutions.

Although we are not faith specialists, we had to be mindful of practical matters of faith importance to our beneficiaries for example; spiritual wellbeing, facilitating advice and support around Islamic divorce/khula and other Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) matters. It was important for us to recognise this and facilitate the support to allow women to move on, or gain closure.

11 Hanif, H. Mahmood, T. Hough, C and Abbott- Halpin, E (2018) Faith, Family and Crime, Lancashire: Arooj

29

Faith:Examples of Interventions bythe project team

• Facilitating faith-based advice and guidance around practical issues such as accessing faith spaces, reconciliation (marriage or family), and divorce/Khula.

• One to one faith based mentoring support from a female faith practitioner. This could involve discussing dilemmas and conflicts, faith healing, faith- based counselling.

• Facilitating group sessions for women to openly talk about their concerns and dilemmas around re-entry in a faith context.

• One to one mentoring support from other women who have gone through similar faith journeys.

• Involving women in faith-based celebrations and community events, especially where there are issues of isolation and they need more support to re-connect back into community life i.e. Ramadan, Eid, Mosque community fairs.

In implementing the above we are mindful of licencing conditions and other restrictions.

One to one session with Imam

Project report

30

Special Considerations:for TACT prisoners

Through our practice we have become increasingly aware of particular tensions experienced by Muslim women prisoners convicted of terrorism related crime. Often, we have found that they grapple with their interpretation of their faith obligations, what they see as the broader plight of the Muslim community internationally and the sense of duty they feel towards this. Some of the women we had contact with, harboured strong sentiments that they were not able to shrug off the label of being a terrorist, ‘Once a terrorist, always a terrorist’. Without appearing to justify their criminality, whilst at the same time fully appreciating the risk element related to them, we also take the view that individuals with proper support and guidance do move on leaving their past behind as demonstrated through our trial cases.

The women appreciated that public protection and surveillance was a part of their package of return back to communities but at some points, felt suffocated to the point of what we felt was disengagement. The perception was that specialist agencies were constantly trying to ‘catch them out’ regardless of them wanting to turn over a new leaf. The women felt more at ease with the project because of it being community led and independent of links to PREVENT, security and surveillance. We had no jurisdiction over these women and our engagement with them, was on voluntary and reciprocal terms.

What sat very uneasily with us as confirmed by our case studies, is the approach to these women was prevention through control and management and less about helping them to find ways forward. Perhaps this was due to possible risks entailed around re-offending. Where agencies did attempt to find solutions in areas such as further education, volunteering and in the employment sphere, they found that institutions were too afraid to engage due to the risky public narratives around TACT (Terrorism ACT) offenders.

In some of the women we witnessed a real sense of desperation and disillusionment due to the lack of purpose and progress in their lives. In some cases, this may manifest itself into negative thoughts and trails. Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of community led research and understanding into this specialist area and hence a lack of credible community-based practice. Consequently, there are no real community solutions in the prevention and desistance space for TACT prisoners on return, only academic top-down soundbites which are very distant from the reality of the community.

31

Mental HealthPrisoner of the mind

Culturally informed interventions in the area of mental health remain critical to the effective rehabilitation of Muslim women prisoners, especially considering the complexity of their journeys. There is a need for early interventions in this area. However, for several reasons, there remains a void in open conversations and acknowledgement of inherent issues both from the community, as well as providers. The challenges of this are best explained by the following quotes from project beneficiaries:

“If you admit to mental health issues, you are dismissed as being ‘crazy’. Who would want to marry you after that or even let you near their kids? So why on earth would you admit to having mental health issues?”. [Beneficiary 6]

“You wouldn’t dare say in prison that you have mental health issues because you don’t want a negative record or to be seen as weak by other women and officers. Sometimes they can use that against you. So, you stay quiet”. [Beneficiary 2]

“I wanted to speak to somebody about my mental health because I’ve been told to block things up for a long time. We aren’t supposed to talk about it but when I looked around there was nobody from my culture that would get me”. [Beneficiary 12]

“I know I’m not supposed to self-harm as a Muslim woman but I just couldn’t get them thoughts out of my head. There was nobody to talk to. I tried to reach out for help but nobody came and I was scared. All my life, all I have ever known is pain so when I self-harm it’s the pain that I’m used to. I’ve been on a mental health waiting list for over one year and still nothing. If it wasn’t’ for the project I doubt I’d be alive”. [Beneficiary 3]

“It was tough for me but even tougher for my children, for them they had lost their mother. As far as they were concerned I could be gone forever. They carried the stigma of their mother being sent to prison. Who could they turn to grieve? My daughter tells me that the hardest thing for her was to explain to her cousins and friends where all of sudden their mother disappeared to.” [Beneficiary 9]

We found that project beneficiaries strongly felt caught between a rock and a hard place- the community and the prisons. They felt that they had little opportunity in the community to openly share their plight, primarily due to the imposed culture of silence and being expected to sacrifice their truth for a bigger cause of maintaining family image and status.

Project report

32

Mental HealthPrisoner of the mind...

At the same time, whilst in prison, women hid their inner hurts for the fear of not being seen to be weak by their fellow inmates and prison staff. The inner conflicts and traumas were compounded by not having access to practitioners who combined cultural understanding/ sensitivities with professional expertise in the system and beyond.

In order to understanding the multi-layers of issues that impacted on the mental of project beneficiaries, we arranged a workshop with a cohort of beneficiaries, co-facilitated by a Muslim woman who herself had lived experience of the criminal justice system and now works as a mental health practitioner. This proved to most insightful as demonstrated by the below two illustrations.

Although we are not mental health specialists, women for a variety of reasons felt they could open up to us about their difficult lived experiences. We tried to create a safe and confidential place for them to disclose which for many, was unavailable for them in other groups such as family or friends. Our feedback from beneficiaries goes to suggest that they were able to disclose very difficult issues to us because we managed to create a culture of consistency, fairness and transparency in our interactions with them. In many ways, this epitomised an open and healthy relationship (something which most had never experienced in their life). For beneficiaries, interactions with other agencies were more around compliance whereas with MWIP the relationship was on a voluntary and relatively unconditional basis and something they wanted to carry on with.

Having someone from a similar faith and culture to talk to, was helpful for the women. For some, language was a major barrier to able to relate and share their experiences. The project team being bilingual greatly helped to make communication easier.

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Mental HealthPrisoner of the mind...

We are not suggesting at all that only people of similar faith and cultural background are able to provide support, but instead, that without developing faith and cultural competency it is that much more difficult to provide the level and the manner of support required.

Interventions by the project team:

• Welcoming beneficiaries to safe, faith & culturally appropriate and none judgemental space.

• Continuous one-to-one support from prison to release. Having a trusted face on this side of the gate alleviates beneficiaries’ anxieties.

• Continuity of support by the same face from prison to the community to build trust.

• Language support through trained and experienced mentors with similar histories.

• Practical support around finding decent accommodation, accessing training and education, volunteering and employability. This alleviate fears of resettling back and achieving a level of independence.

• Where appropriate and requested, support with reviving contacts and relations with families and friends. This helped to overcome the feeling of rejection and loneliness.

• Accompanied referrals to speciality agencies. This meant providing advice on faith and cultural context to the practitioners so that they are able to make informed decisions.

Our observations have been that the trauma experienced by Muslim women before and during imprisonment, will have a direct impact upon their levels of resilience when coming ‘through the gate’. This would have a knock-on effect on their ability to reintegrate/rebuild their lives. We recognise that many of these women’s experiences are trauma informed and therefore they require faith based and culturally sensitive trauma informed services and resources i.e. therapy/counselling/group work. Thus our recommendations are; for prisons to develop and deliver faith based/culturally sensitive counselling programmes by appropriate practitioners to support Muslim women in prison. This would entail counsellors who are trained to work with the understanding of the complexity and intersectionality of the women’s context, background, faith, age, gender, culture and ethnicity. We would also suggest a tailored emotional wellbeing programme to be delivered to Muslim women in the community upon release.

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InstitutionalInequalities:

Over the last six years in our desistance work with Muslim women we have become more and more aware, through the case studies of our beneficiaries, of the inherent inequalities in the British Criminal Justice System when it comes to the treatment of BAME communities.

A number of well documented reports such as the Corston review (2007)12 identified that BME women were further disadvantaged than other groups ‘by racial discrimination, stigma, isolation, cultural differences, language barriers and lack of employment skills’. The Prison Reform Trust report -Counted Out: Black, Asian and minority ethnic women in the CJS also highlights the lack of data as a significant problem and the challenges faced by BAME and white women in the CJS including exposure to domestic and/or sexual abuse, problematic substance abuse and the probability that they have primary care of dependent children. But there are clear disparities in that BAME women are more likely to be remanded or sentenced to custody, more likely to plead not guilty, have less access to mental health support in prison and experience more discrimination from prisoners and staff. In addition, there is acute stigma for Asian and Muslim women on release from prison from their own communities and a lack of specialist organisations working with women from minority ethnic groups.

The Young Review13 into Improving outcomes for young black and/or Muslim men in the criminal justice system by Baroness Lola Young (2014), and the Lammy Review14 also highlights inherent inequalities and the disproportionate number of BAME women being sentenced and the harshness of sentencing compared to other groups.

From the point of view of Muslim women in the criminal system, their plight is made that much worse by an intersectionality of issues:

a. The lack of acknowledgement that the issue even exists or is of a scale meriting attention.

b. Muslim women suffer from a triple disadvantage on grounds of gender, race and faith. “They will get you on one of these if not on all”, as one of our project beneficiaries intimated.

c. The inherent embedded culture of bias and prejudice which pervades our institutions.

d. The fear of dealing with anything that is ‘different’ and outside the accepted ‘norm’ It is safer not to go that extra step.

12 Corston, J. (2007) The Corston Report: a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system. London: Home Office

13 Young, L. (2014) The Young Review- Improving outcomes for young black and or Muslim men in the criminal justice system. London: Barrow Cadbury Trust

14 Lammy, D. (2017) The Lammy Review, London: Ministry of Justice

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InstitutionalInequalities...

e. The culture of silence in the community that surrounds Muslim women criminality, ‘How could this happen’ syndrome. This prevents the community to develop and apply an appropriate community led desistance approach and also prevents it from holding other providers accountable.

These and other factors contribute to the relatively dire plight of Muslim women and other women of similar attributes in the Criminal Justice System.

Even where providers want to reach out and be responsive, they find themselves limited because of the lack of cultural know-how and the fear of backlash for getting things wrong. It is much safer and easier to side-line anything that is different or requires an extra bit of effort.

Furthermore, in understanding institutional inequality in all its multifaceted dimensions, we have to begin with the acknowledging that our institutions, small and large, also mirror trends and undercurrents in the wider society, not being immune to a spike in Islamophobia, racism, prejudice and a climate of fear generated by extreme lobbies active in our society.

The austerity regime being applied across all sectors, including the criminal justice landscape is not without a debilitating impact on providers’ capacity to respond to new emerging needs and challenges. The prison system, probation and allied providers are very much in ‘flux’ due to a climate of uncertainty. Although this should not be an excuse for inaction, we cannot underestimate the difficulties of the climate in which many of the providers operate. However, we do put forward that the equality and inclusiveness of provision is not always about additional resources, it is more about integrating and reflecting it in current practice.

When it comes to the Muslim community, the plight of Muslim women in the criminal justice set up is not on the radar or part of any collective conversations about the growing menace of criminality in our society, perhaps being overshadowed by the disproportionate representation of Muslim men in British criminal system. This, by and large, explains the lack of community-based desistence work to support Muslim women post-release.

All this has resulted in:

• Culturally ill-informed and inappropriate support services for Muslim women in the criminal justice system.

• Absence of a voice in local, regional and national forums where policies and strategies are decided.

• Absence of culturally-informed practitioners within the mainstream providers.• A lack of investment in community-led desistance support which has deprived the BAME

community sector of its capacity.

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Recommendationsand conclusion:

In deriving these set of recommendation from our work we have been mindful of four basic principles:

1. The British Muslim community is very diverse in terms of its ethnic, cultural and social profile and so, if not careful, we could fall into the trap of over-generalising. The Muslim community presents a complex set of dynamics which would be worthy of more in-depth study not currently in the remit of our project.

2. Not apportioning blame to any particular sector by stating the realities of challenges faced by our project beneficiaries in the context of shared responsibilities. There is fundamental lacking and failures on all fronts.

3. That any meaningful and lasting systemic change has to incorporate equality frameworks in to the core of any policy developments.

4. Change has to be in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and providers.

Recommendations:A. Community-led action:

1. There has to be a community-led, concerted effort to:

• Raise the awareness of the push and pull factors that impact on Muslim women’s path into and out of criminality to all stakeholders.

• Develop a community owned preventative programme of action by community organisations, especially those with a particular focus on gender equality and specialist provisions.

• Work in tandem with the faith and civic leadership to enact and deliver a programme of awareness internally within the community.

2. To engage Muslim women with the ‘lived experience’ with statutory, public and private sector providers to build their understanding of inherent challenges during and post-incarceration, around what culturally informed response looks like.

3. To further develop a group of Imams and Aalimahs to provide faith-based and gender support through robust and accessible community chaplaincy.

4. To include a compulsory element of training for Imams and Aalimahs in Muslim seminaries/training institutes.

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Recommendationsand conclusion...

5. To use Muslim funding charities to raise the awareness of the ways to support women and families through dedicated zakat and sadaqa projects

6. To establish a national steering group for and of Muslim providers to share specialist knowledge, good practice and to mobilise resources for the enhancement of capacity for joined working with leading national Criminal Justice Agencies such as EQUAL, Prison Reform Trust and Clinks.

B. Recommendations directed at agencies/providers:

7. BAME Representation - For all actors in the criminal justice system and allied agencies to achieve a meaningful diversity of representations in their areas of operations. This includes developing and implementing targeted programmes of action to address imbalance in representation of BAME communities in staffing and management structures.

8. MOJ Leadership - To directly share and promote the progress of the MOJ Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (2017 - 2020) with BAME community based providers.

9. Cultural Competency - For prisons to increase knowledge and the skills base of their staff so that they are able to be more understanding and responsive of the needs of the BAME women, in particular the female Muslim women residents.

10. Training - For allied agencies working inside the prisons to acquire specialist training for a greater understanding and appreciation of the challenges and difficulties facing Muslim and other BAME women with similar attributes to be able to contextualise and provide more appropriate interventions.

11. Engagement - For third sector national organisations working to affect a responsive and representative change in the criminal justice system to pro-actively reach out and involve BAME communities in their work, particularly those disproportionately over-represented in sentencing and convictions.

C. Funding agencies:

12. For funding organisations with particular interest in criminal justice to make ‘community led desistance’ a key strand of their funding priorities.

13. To invest in co-production of community-based and community-led desistance programmes involving the establishment of ‘reception hubs’ in different regions along similar lines to the model established at Khidmat Centres in Bradford. A joint agency approach is a vital.

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Recommendationsand conclusion...

14. For the Ministry of Justice to ensure that its direct and indirect investment reaches out to the small community-based (and led) desistance programmes where real difference is being made.

15. Muslim funding charities to increase their involvement and investment in supporting community led desistance work through Zakat and Sadaqa projects.

Conclusion:

It has been important to avoid apportioning blame but instead to acknowledge there have been collective failings by the community, families and the system. Moving forward we take the view that the plight of Muslim women prisoners and their post-prison difficulties are a shared responsibility. There must be a concerted effort to develop a model that joins up the expertise, strengths and resources of community based organisations, public services and statutory bodies. Better outcomes and experiences of Muslim women in the CJS can only be secured through a commitment to a shared responsibility for their rehabilitation, with each set of ‘actors’ playing their due respective role and contribution in a structured and planned way.

We are confident that the universality of our approach can be replicated, transferred and applied to alleviate the plight of not only Muslim women but also other women with similar attributes and experiences. In addition, there are no reasons why some of the learning from this model cannot be transferred to inform the rehabilitation of the Muslim male prison population, with its disproportionally high representation in the British prisons. The model is fluid but can be used as a baseline to develop a conducive culturally informed approach.

There is a call for a cultural shift in the community’s approach to women’s criminality and also a fundamental shift in the institutions in their treatment of Muslim women. Our understanding of the plight of Muslims caught up in the web of criminality is very much in the broader context of inherent inequalities both in the system and outside it. Therefore, there can be no meaningful change until the equality issues are addressed and put right. One of the key prerequisite to this is giving voice to the affected communities at all levels within the criminal justice hierarchy. This will not happen without empowering the communities who want to be involved and contribute to change.

Change also calls for proper investment. Equality can’t be delivered ‘on the cheap’. It also needs to be overt throughout the work force, representation and engagement at all levels. Sadly, our institutions have been reluctant to keep pace with the evolving makeup of society. Similarly, the community has not evolved to accept and embrace new challenges and emerging areas of concerns and, by and large, have remained aloof from areas of obvious discomfort, particularly the criminal justice setup, seeing it more of a specialist area for legal minds.

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