Data from Sacro’s KPI reports showed that of 107 women referred from April 2013 to May 2014, 11% were in the age range 18-24, 83% were in the age range 25-49, 4% were in the over 50 category and 2% were recorded as ‘not yet known’. Table 4 details the ages of the women who participated in interviews and those detailed in the KPI reports.
Table 4: Age of women who accessed the Sacro WMS
Source of Data Age
16-17 18-24 25-49 Over 50 Not Yet Known KPIs Apr 2013 - Mar
2014
0 9 65 2 1
KPIs Apr - May 2014
0 3 24 2 1
Interview Participants
0 1 16 3 0
Other mentoring programmes have reported a similar age demographic. The WIPAN mentoring programme in Australia reported that the majority of the women who used their service were in the age range of 25-34 years. Brown and Ross (2010a) reported that 80% of women under the age of 30 disengaged with their mentor immediately after release from prison, compared to 40% of women over 40 in the Vacro mentoring programme. Similarly, the Shine Mentoring Programme in Scotland reported that mentors viewed younger women as more likely to disengage with the service than older women (Ipsos MORI 2015). Younger women may be less likely to be ‘ready for mentoring’ or are not being referred to mentoring. The service may have been directed towards women who had a long history of offending rather than women who may be at risk of offending but have not been convicted of an offence. The smaller number of younger women engaging with mentoring in Scotland may also reflect the decreasing number of convictions for women in Scotland under the age of 21 and the increasing number of convictions for women over the age of 30 (Burman and McIvor
The majority of the women who were interviewed in the present study had been convicted of less serious offences such as shoplifting and breach of the peace usually related to their drug and alcohol use. This is described by two women:
Fiona: I was going shop lifting. I hated that, I hated it. Every morning you would wake up with that feeling ‘aw no, do I need to do this again?’ It's horrible, stealing, shoplifting.
Gemma: The order was given for breach of the peace, numerous overdoses, incarcerations for my own protection, playing music in the home too loud.
There were a small number of women who had been convicted of more serious offences, before engaging with a mentor. One woman was convicted of assault with injury (domestic injury) and it was her first offence. Four women were serving prison sentences before engaging, with the mentoring service, with sentences ranging from one year to six years. Their offences included drug trafficking, a Schedule 1 sex offence, assault with injury and abduction. The offences committed by the majority of women in the study were similar to that of women in the criminal justice system in Scotland generally. In 2014 to 2015, less than 2% of the offences and crimes committed by women in Scotland involved serious violence. Women accounted for over a third of fraud and shoplifting convictions and 20% of common assault (Scottish Government 2016). Although the majority of women in the present study were receiving support from a Sacro mentor because they were on a statutory order in the community, most had a history of offending and experience of prison. This cumulative experience of short-term prison sentences and contact with the criminal justice system may have been more damaging for women than one longer term sentence (Armstrong and Weaver 2010).
Women in the present study did not speak in depth about their underlying reasons for offending, however it was clear that they did not view offending as a ‘need’ and an area that needed attention specifically. For example, women did not offend because of the ‘thrill’ of offending.
Rachel: You’re there [at probation appointment] to talk to them so you don’t reoffend but sometimes I’d walk out and go right away and just steal anyway because they’d annoyed me that much. They weren’t willing to help, they would just say ‘don’t do this and don’t do that. It’s not about not doing it, it’s about trying to help me stop doing it.’
Rachel committed an offence when she left a meeting with her supervising social worker, in response to the frustration she felt that her needs (e.g. bipolar disorder) were not being met. She is clearly defiant and blaming of the social worker for her offending. Rachel’s quote also challenges the argument that she is only a victim without agency, as she goes shop lifting after her appointment. Another woman explained the practical challenges of the transition of prison to the community and the relationship of these difficulties with reoffending:
Claire: Because you only get a lib grant, it's not very much money and then you've got all these places to phone. All the running about to do and that's when most people after maybe phoning up the benefits agency 4 or 5 times in the one day end up hanging up the phone and walking and shop lifting after drinking. They start reoffending again because things…I mean things are hard for everybody now, even people that are out there working or bringing in a wage, things are hard. You know all the benefits system has all changed. It all changed there on 1st April. Women aren't even getting a community care grant15.
Mentors and social workers were in agreement that women offended because of underlying issues and that offending was a by-product of coping with other needs:
M1: You know women have very complex needs and there tends to be some form of trauma or abuse that then leads to misuse alcohol/drugs, negative relationships, offending behaviour. So never starts off with a woman just going out and offending.
15 Community care grants are provided to people on low income to live independently, for example
Women were described as ‘chaotic’ and ‘vulnerable’ by mentors due to experiences of homelessness, drug use, problematic relationships and other difficulties symptomatic of their marginalisation. For example:
M8: I think initially because they are so chaotic they just will, in my experience, let their bills pile up or they've not got anybody there to encourage them ‘come on, lets get this sorted out’ you'll feel better once it is sorted out.
Mngr1: A lot of our women come from very vulnerable backgrounds which makes them quite vulnerable women and unfortunately they tend to be drawn to people who recognise that vulnerability and can abuse it. If you've come up through childhood maybe having abusive parents, whether that be physically, sexually or emotionally, to then enter into adulthood life with relationships that continue to be that way then you don't identify good qualities in yourself because no one else has ever identified those qualities in you. It's very sad.
Although many women who offend have experienced high levels of victimisation it does not necessarily follow that they are not able to demonstrate agency (Allen 1987; Batchelor 2005). Viewing women as vulnerable and not capable of making rational decisions about their own life due to their experiences of abuse could be disempowering (Batchelor 2005).
Some mentors associated this ‘chaotic lifestyle’ with women missing appointments including mandatory statutory social work appointments. Previous literature has identified risk of breaching statutory orders as more relevant for women than men, with women more likely to breach their order through missing appointments rather than committing another offence (Malloch and McIvor 2011; Angiolini et al. 2012).