Many female prisoners are abuse victims, yet female incarceration is growing

The number of women incarcerated is growing faster than men, according to a new study, with experts warning police are misidentifying victims and perpetrators in domestic violence incidents. 

It’s particularly concerning as crime has been decreasing across Australia, while Australia’s imprisonment growth was the third highest among OECD countries between 2003 and 2018. 

The increase in women in prison is partly due to police taking domestic violence callouts more seriously, and tougher bail laws — but also a misunderstanding about how domestic violence happens. 

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia report, released this morning, found Australia’s prisons are set to cost $7 billion a year by 2030. In the past decade, the number of women in prison has grown by 64% — considerably faster than the 45% growth for men.

The report notes that 65% of surveyed women entering prison had received a mental health diagnosis prior to being incarcerated. Approximately 70% of imprisoned women are victims of crime themselves, and a “growing number” of female offenders are victim-survivors of domestic abuse living in poverty and disadvantage — a statistic sure to be worsened by the current cost-of-living crisis. Most of these women are in custody for breaching community corrections or justice orders, such as bail. Across 2021, there were 3292 women in prison, 721 for acts intended to cause injury, followed by illicit drug offences at 680. 

Worryingly, when attending domestic violence callouts, “police were consistently misidentifying women victims of family violence as primary aggressors”, the report states.

One study by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) reviewed domestic violence deaths in Queensland from 2016 to 2017 and found that nearly half of all murdered women had been identified as perpetrators of a domestic violence incident on at least one occasion prior to their death. Almost all First Nations victims had been recorded as perpetrators at least once.

ANU professor of criminology in the Centre for Social Research and Methods Lorana Bartels told Crikey this increase in women prisoners was concerning but not surprising. The number of domestic violence incidents police attend has been growing yearly — in Victoria police attended more than 92,000 family incidents in 2020 alone. 

“Police are going to more and more domestic violence incidents and taking it more seriously … which isn’t a bad thing,” Bartels said. But too often, she said, police find the perpetrator of domestic violence to be calm and rational, while the female victim is not.

“She’s the one who gets charged as the perpetrator and is brought into the control of the criminal justice system for assault, offensive language, assault of police, etc,” she said, with First Nations women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community more likely to be taken to prison than the general population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 21 times more likely to be in prison than non-Indigenous women. 

Other times, police will simply book both people because they’re unsure who is in the wrong. “So it’s hardly surprising that this feeds increasingly into the criminal justice system,” Bartels said. 

Those who are booked often find it hard to get bail, especially in Victoria. Bail laws were strengthened in 2018 after Crown prosecutors argued Bourke Street murderer James Gargasoulas should have never been released from prison following his lengthy criminal history. 

While these laws may be suitable for murderers, they’re unsuitable for women booked following domestic violence incidents. In Queensland, the overall median prison sentence was just 3.9 months with 62% of sentences for nonviolent crimes, meaning the women imprisoned present little risk to the community. 

These short sentences have huge impacts, as the report notes. They do nothing to deter offenders, offer few opportunities for rehabilitation, have significant negative impacts on the offender’s family, employment, housing and income, and likely increase the chances of a person committing another crime.