We are delighted to be hosting our first live event to be held in Central London - venue details to be released on 28th March. Please note that you will be required to produce ID which needs to match the name used for the ticket booking.

In 1823, The Gaols Act passed into law. This marked the beginning of centrally imposed standards across all prisons in England and Wales. Amongst its provisions, the Act identified the distinct needs of female offenders and that these should be met through single-sex prison accommodation and same-sex service provision. The Gaols Act was also an important moment for what would later be understood to be feminist criminology.

Elizabeth Fry, also known as the “Angel of Prisons”, had begun her campaign for prison reform in 1813 following a visit to Newgate Prison. The desperately overcrowded conditions women and children were held in and the sex-based vulnerabilities women in prison experienced appalled her. Her diaries make clear the risk to female prisoners when male prisoners were held with them, including rape and sexual exploitation.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, which has seen the publication of the Corston Report in 2007, the Angiolini Report in 2012 and the Female Offender Strategy in 2018. The unmet needs of female offenders remain of pressing concern. Two hundred years after The Gaols Act, women are not just “marginalised within a system largely designed by men for men”, they and their children are subject to additional sanction.

It’s been 200 years since The Gaols Act - where do we go from here?

 Introducing our chair:

Joan Smith is an author and journalist. Her books include Misogynies and Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists. She was Co-Chair of the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Board from 2013 to 2021.

Introducing our speakers:

Ian Acheson is a former prison governor with extensive involvement in operational command of serious prison incidents and counter-terrorism policy and practice. He has also been Chief Operating Officer for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He is currently visiting professor at the University of Staffordshire School of Policing, Law and Forensics and a specialist in counter extremism.

Michael Biggs is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College. His article on the ‘Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons’ was published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas in 2022. He is a director of the human rights organization Sex Matters.

Lord Blencathra has been a Conservative Peer since 2011 and was formerly Minister of State at the Home Office and Chief Whip. At the end of November 2021 and in January 2022, he brought two amendments to the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill which sought to provide protection to women in prison by reinforcing their rights to single-sex prison accommodation. Although these did not proceed to a vote as they were opposed by both government and opposition their significance in contributing to the groundwork that saw the recent change to policy by the Ministry of Justice is clear.

Jo Phoenix is an author and Professor of criminology in the School of Law at the University of Reading. Her research interests include sex, gender, sexualities and justice, youth justice and punishment, the production of criminological knowledge and research ethics. She has studied and written about a wide variety of subjects including managerialism and ethics in the production of criminological knowledge, prostitution, prostitution policy reform, child sexual exploitation, youth penalty and youth justice practice and policy. Her most recent research concerns academic freedom, politics ethics and research and sex, gender, gender identity and criminal justice policy. Jo is also a trustee at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.