Book Review: Women, Drugs and Custody
| Author | Nicola Carr |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455050204900219 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
172
Women, Drugs and Custody
Margaret St Malloch
Waterside Press, 2001;
pp166; £16.00, pbk
ISBN 1 872 870 91 0
The issue of drugs in prison is one that is
only ever tacitly acknowledged by
governments and the wider public. The
links between drug use and crime have
been raised in the public consciousness
through the government’s agenda on crime
and the saturation media coverage on the
issue.
This book explores the reality of drug
use for women in prison, through an
analysis of five institutions in Scotland
and England and is the product of ten
years of research into the subject.
Attention is focused on official policy
towards tackling drug use in penal
institutions and the reality of the
implementation of this policy from the
perspective of prisoners and staff.
The inherent problematic of the
punitive and rehabilitative discourse is
explored in relation to women drug users
in prison. The author focuses attention on
the contradictory approaches adopted by a
penal state that seeks to punish and reform
in tandem. The implications of a policy of
bifurcation that differentiates between
those ‘worthy’ of help and those who are
punished more severely because they
do not want to be ‘helped’, is also
highlighted. A useful analysis is
undertaken of the social constructs of drug
use/misuse, crime and criminality and the
interplay of these factors with gender.
What comes through from reading the
book is that the approaches to drug use in
prisons generally, and in the female estate
in particular, are woefully inadequate. A
picture of an uncoordinated, contradictory
and poorly resourced policy is created, the
voices of those on the receiving end of
this ‘service’ illuminate the text. One of
the figures quoted from the research on
which the book is based, is that 10% of
the women interviewed had used drugs for
the first time whilst in custody. This
somewhat defeats the aim of sentencers
who impose custody in the hope that a
prison will operate as a detoxification
unit. The continued prescribing of
powerful and dated anti-psychotic drugs
such as Largactil to stave off the effects of
withdrawal, whilst somewhat lessened,
remains shocking. This is a point
particularly pertinent to the female drug
user who is subject to the full rigours of
law and medicine and the dictates of these
disciplines as to the acceptability of
female behaviours and ‘appropriate
femininities’. Whilst the text covers these
issues well, little attention is paid to the
issues of race, ethnicity or sexuality and
the impact of these discourses on the
female drug user within prison. This
seems an oversight, particularly given the
disproportionate numbers of women from
ethnic minorities in prison for drug-related
offences.
This book was published before the
impact of CARATTeams could be fully
assessed, and thus could benefit from an
updated chapter, assessing the impact of
these. Throughout the text, the author
decries the lack of non-custodial
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