ABSTRACT
There are only small numbers of women in prison in the United Kingdom, and few practitioners work exclusively with women in prison. This chapter is designed as an overview of the key facts about women prisoners, many of which differentiate them from men in prison. This is important because, by and large, these differences have been unacknowledged; as a result the system designed to deal with women in prison has been gender blind. Also, at times, the representation of criminal women has created a degree of mythology. There are striking media portrayals of women’s jails as well as considerable public interest in a small number of individual women whose crimes have made them notorious. The facts are less sensational but more useful.
