Resource Library
The NWJC champions and promotes best practice for working with women in contact with the criminal justice system.
This library catalogues a wide range of resources that consolidate and demonstrate the collective wisdom and expertise of women’s organisations and criminal justice specialists. It contains briefing papers, reports, policy documents, current research and other useful resources that provide insight, expertise and best practice examples for working with and supporting women and girls.
Resources can be filtered by keywords, themes, organisation and format and search results include links to further information and downloadable content.
Please contact us to recommend any additional resources that should be added to the Resource Library.
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Advance
A place to go like this – Breaking the cycle of harm for mothers involved in offending who are survivors of domestic abuse…
In this report Advance explores how violence against women and girls lies at the heart of the intergenerational cycle of harm, including links with serious youth violence.
Centre for Justice Innovation
Pre-court diversion for women: Evidence and practice briefing
This briefing aims to support practitioners seeking to develop or improve gender-specific pre-court diversion. It outlines the evidence base around women’s offending and the specific needs of wo…
Lankelly Chase, Heriot-Watt University, DMSS Research
Gender Matters: Gendered patterns of severe and multiple disadvantage in England
This seminal report considers the ways in which disadvantage presents differently in women, showing that interpersonal violence and abuse and poor mental health demonstrate gendered differences in the…
Khidmat Centres
Sisters in Desistance Community-based solutions for Muslim women post-prison
This report examines the social stigmas and taboos faced by incarcerated women and scopes the challenges experienced by Muslim women on their release back to the community. Piloted at the Khidmat Cent…
Ministry of Justice
The Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders’ Family and Other Relationships to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime
Lord Farmer’s second review looks at strengthening family and other relational ties across both custody and the community through the lens of female offenders. It finds that supporting women to …
Brainkind (previously The Disabilities Trust)
Making the Link: Female Offending and Brain Injury
In the first study of its kind, The Disabilities Trust provided a dedicated service to support the identification and rehabilitation of female offenders with a history of brain injury, in HMP/YOI Drak…
Alternative approaches to prison for mothers of young children
England and Wales has the highest incarceration rate in Europe and approximately 11,000 women receive a custodial sentence each year. Sixty-six per cent of women in prison are mothers of children unde…
Tavistock Institute
Why Women’s Centres Work
This evidence briefing has been developed as a resource for Women’s Centres, to support their conversations with commissioners at a local and regional level. It is intended to help commissioners…
Centre for Justice Innovation
Whole Systems Approach (WSA) focusing on women in the Criminal Justice System
The Whole Systems Approach adopted in Sussex centres on a multi-agency approach to addressing the complex needs of women who are in contact with the justice system by supporting them to access relevan…
Women's Resource Centre
Hearing Women’s Voices: Why Women 2018
Hearing women’s voices: Why Women 2018 provides current, robust evidence of the value and effectiveness of women’s organisations. It updates the original why women? campaign, which was launched in Nov…
Prison Reform Trust
“There’s a reason we’re in trouble” – Domestic abuse as a driver to women’s offending
Many women in prison have been victims of much more serious offences than the ones they are accused of, with a growing body of research indicating that women’s exposure to physical, emotional an…
Short but not sweet: A study of the impact of short custodial sentences on mothers & their children
This research report bears powerful witness to the harsh impact on women and their children of the short custodial sentences too often meted out in the name of justice. It draws attention to the rippl…