Supporting Muslim Women's Desistance from Crime - #RKEFest23

My project is a collaboration with Dr Sarah Goodwin (Sheffield Hallam University) and Dr Sofia Buncy (Director of Muslim Women in Prison Project). It began in 2019, when we met at an event and identified significant gaps and a lack of diversity within desistance theorising and associated academic discourse.  
The partnership highlights the importance of adopting practice-informed research, in order to capture the most contemporary examples of working within the Criminal Justice System.

The initial pilot project was funded internally in 2020 by CeASR and this captured the desistance journeys of Muslim women in Bradford, who had recently been released from prison. The findings of this project challenged much of the existing desistance theorising and we argue that a culturally informed approach is essential, to identify women’s faith, cultural and community needs, when supporting an individual’s resettlement.

The research focuses on the importance of relocation and the symbolic factors which play a role in Muslim Women’s decision making as they prepare for prison release. The research has featured in a chapter in ‘The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Experience of the Criminal Justice System’ and will be disseminated at an event where the team will be launching a film.

The film captures the voices of Muslim women who are resettling back into the community following a custodial sentence. The emerging themes presented in the film include:

• The role of shame and dishonour
• Loneliness and isolation
• Relocation
• A sentence within the community

The women involved in the pilot project shared lots of challenges in having their needs met and/or identified by the varying services they accessed inside prison and whilst on probation. Some of the women cited a lack of relationship with prison staff and an inequitable experience when comparing themselves to white women on their wing.

Despite the various governmental and policy reviews highlighting the need for anti-racist approaches across His Majesties Prison Service (HMPPS), the women we met, shared that they had experienced discrimination and islamophobia whilst they were in prison.

The findings of the project and the film are being shared with HMPPS at the event launch in January 2024 and can be used as a tool to support the training of experienced and newly qualified probation and prison officers. The research team hope that the resources can enhance the trauma and culturally informed approach required, when working with marginalised women.

The next stage of the project has recently been funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, as they aim to provide a platform for the voices of Young Muslim Women leaving prison. Within the next iteration of the research, the team aim to capture preventative and educational strategies to enhance the faith-based and school-based approaches when working with young Muslim women at risk of entering the CJS. Data collection for this research began in November 2023 and findings of the project will be published in a report in 2025.