Prisonomics is a timely contribution to debates about the cost-effectiveness and proportionality of women’s imprisonment for relatively minor, non-violent offending. It contains lots of facts and figures (including from the Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefings), but it is the snapshots of women whose paths Vicky Pryce briefly crosses that most convincingly demonstrate the futility of prison for many. Pryce makes no claim to be typical of women in the UK’s prisons, but an aspect that is typical is how short her custodial sentence was – like 71 per cent of women entering prison she was sentenced to less than 12 months in custody. Also, she was imprisoned for a first offence, which is more common for women than for men (26 per cent vs 12 per cent). If, by virtue of her educational, professional and social background she is not representative of women in prison she has since her release become an eloquent spokeswoman on their behalf. She says she was struck ‘by the senselessness of it all for most of the women I met’ during her brief period of incarceration, and calls for a different approach. She dedicates the book to ‘the amazing women’ she met in prison – and her respect and empathy for them resonate, despite her insistence on referring to them as ‘girls’ throughout the book , a practice much condemned by the prisons inspectorate as condescending and infantilising.

The book is structured into two unequal parts. The first, larger, part of the book is an engaging narrative in the form of a diary that weaves her experience of entering and adjusting to prison together with research and reflections on women’s prisons. She provides some telling vignettes of prison life, and the circumstances of the women she finds herself with, and the challenges they face on release. The second section draws more directly on her expertise as a professional economist to assess the costs and benefits of imprisonment and the alternatives, and considers innovative international practice.

The book comes as the government announces its intentions for women’s prisons and responds to a critical report from the justice committee about lack of progress in pursuing community resolutions. The government’s plans include closing East Sutton Park, the prison to which Pryce was transferred from HMP Holloway. Described by the chief inspector of prisons as ‘unusual’ – located in a 16th century country mansion – it is one of only two open women’s prisons, both of them small and both slated for closure. The reconfiguration of the women’s custodial estate is intended to enable women to serve their sentences closer to home and provide improved employment opportunities. But most of the solutions to women’s offending lie outside prison walls and require increased investment in women’s community services.

The second part of the book provides a useful summary of the evidence for the economic benefits of reducing women’s imprisonment. She looks at six areas: the cost of prison against alternatives, the costs of reoffending (women on community orders have lower levels of reoffending), the long-term costs to society of imprisoning mothers, the impact of sentencing tariffs, the return on investment in women’s education and employment, and the scope for selling off prison real estate and reinvesting in community support. All of these areas, as the author concludes, would benefit from further research, and in some areas her own analysis has been hampered by a lack of gender-specific data. This book should be a spur to further economic analysis and encourage a greater focus on evidence-based policy. There is certainly considerable scope for reducing the economic and human costs of women’s imprisonment.

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Jenny Earle is programme director, Reducing Women’s Imprisonment, Prison Reform Trust

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Prisonomics: Behind Bars in Britain’s Failing Prisons
Vicky Pryce
Biteback Publishing | 336pp | £16.99