Women in prison: Unpicking the negative label

The Guardian recently published an article, ‘Bad girls’ is how society labels women in prison. But what if that label is a lie?, written by Sabrina Mahtani, a human rights lawyer and writer. We wanted to reflect on some of the key themes and how they overlap with our work supporting British people in prison around the world and their families. 

Prisons are not safe spaces for women. Vulnerable women go into prison and come out further traumatised.

Mahtani has founded Women Beyond Walls – a global collaborative dedicated to combating the mass incarceration and over-criminalisation of women and girls worldwide – and is co-founder of AdvocAid, an organisation providing holistic access to justice for girls and women caught up in Sierra Leone’s often unjust legal system.  

In partnership with other lawyers around the world, Mahtani argues that prison should be a last resort for women, who “in most cases… are criminalised due to poverty, mental illness, abuse or discrimination.” She details stories of women arrested for selling food without a license in order to survive, who have been coerced into selling drugs, and – for the small portion who have committed violent crimes – have themselves been survivors of violence and acted in self-defence.   

The statistics  

In our work at Prisoners Abroad, we often say that the family members we support carry a hidden burden, living in fear of judgement, and this is especially true for the children impacted, as Mahtani highlights in her article; she describes children as “collateral damage of imprisonment” and writes that “children – inside and outside prison – are invisible victims. There are at least 19,000 children detained in prison with their mothers and 1.4 million children have a mother in prison.” 

Shockingly, Mahtani highlights that imprisonment of women is increasing worldwide and growing at a faster rate than men. Statistics collected by World Prison Brief show that women and girls make up 6.8% of the global prison population. In both Asia and Oceania, the total number of female prisoners has more than doubled since 2000. In Europe, the European female prison population has risen by nearly 25% (if the figures for Russia are excluded). 

And this trend is unfortunately reflected in our own statistics. Prisoners Abroad has seen a worrying increase in the number of British women we are supporting in foreign prisons over the last two years – with a noticeable jump in numbers since April 2025. Currently, women make up approximately 20% of all new arrests since April – a figure that usually sits somewhere between 5-10%. 68% of these women are under the age of 35.  

Behind the arrests 

The last time we saw this kind of ratio was around 20 years ago when drug trafficking through the Caribbean reached its peak and we saw large numbers of women detained – and it seems again that drugs have a significant part to play in the current rising numbers. Mahtani says: “Many women sell drugs due to poverty and coercion; though not major players in the drug trade, they are easier to apprehend by police trying to meet quotas.” There has been much debate about why this sudden increase has occurred. Prisoners Abroad most often works reactively in response to an arrest and the immediate needs of the individual, rather than focusing on the reason behind an arrest, but we have noted a connection to the decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand in 2022; since late 2024, we have seen a total of 86 new cases which can be directly linked to Thailand, with the individual either travelling from or through the country prior to their arrest. 

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s recent Travel Aware campaign – which we work closely to promote – has highlighted the risks of carrying cannabis out of Thailand, with reference to possible coercion and grooming. Some of the campaign’s key messages include:  

• Do not carry anything through customs for someone else.
• Do not carry cannabis through customs for someone else. 
• Do not carry cannabis out of Thailand.
• Do not carry drugs through customs for someone else.  

Some of the arrests of young British women have been very high-profile, with extensive reporting in the news. Many of these articles have been framed in a particularly negative and judgmental light. In her Guardian article, Mahtani notes a similar sentiment more widely, saying: “For too long, stigma, a desire to promote only ‘sympathetic victims’ and sidelining those who do not fit into neat narratives has meant that marginalised women and their children are ignored, despite pledges by the UN to ‘leave no one behind’” and “those who do not fulfil traditional stereotypes of the moral and motherly woman are often punished more harshly.” 

Back in May, when we first commented on this trend, Christopher Stacey, Chief Executive of Prisoners Abroad, said: 

When you see photos in the media of suitcases packed full of drugs, it can be easy to jump straight to having little sympathy. But for Prisoners Abroad as a charity, this isn’t about sympathy, or whether someone should or shouldn’t be in prison, it’s about people’s basic needs and their dignity, supporting people while they’re in prison. It is also important to remember that, at the point many stories hit the news, people are yet to be convicted of any crime.