Managing inclusion or preparing for exclusion? A critical examination of gender-responsive management of female Central and Eastern European prisoners in England and Wales

Occupational values, paternalism and a rehabilitative zeal

Whereas gender-responsive policy and practice is often formally framed in terms of ‘empowerment’ – a term emphasizing women's agency and previously associated with liberal feminist movements – prison practitioners more commonly operate within paternalistic cultures of ‘caring for’ female prisoners (see also Carlen, 1982; Hannah-Moffat, 2000, 2001). This occupational mandate is rooted in a ‘sense of mission’, and often described as an outcome of gender-responsive work which motivates practitioners towards ‘working on’ women as a form of a ‘project’ (Crawley, 2006; Arnold, 2016). The accounts of practitioners indicated that this was connected closely to a culture of ‘making a difference’ (see also Bennett, Crewe and Wahidin, 2013) from which (alongside enforcement of order, security and safety) officers and other staff derived a sense of justification and meaning in their interactions with female CEEU prisoners:

I am not saying I’m very important but I’ve found myself very important in the sense that I can basically help the [CEEU] women to understand the system a bit better, you know what's going to happen to them here, help them with the daily stuff, because many of them, they don't even understand the basic paperwork. (Millie, Diversity Officer)

In practice, rather than being concerned with listening to and acting ‘on behalf’ of individuals, partitioners often prioritised identifying characteristics believed to be associated with CEEU women's offending. For Helen, a Diversity and Equality Manager at Prison A, CEEU women represented simply a new FFNP regional group, one characterised by failed migratory projects and histories of sex-based exploitation. This view typified perceptions of the majority of both, prison and third sector practitioners, in all three establishments. The role of the politics of border control in the women's stories was often omitted. Instead, understandings of CEEU women's offending often emphasized relationality and dependency on exploitative partners and/or familial responsibilities. Gendered vulnerabilities were understood to be located in two sites: the women themselves, and circumstances of poverty and exploitation in the countries of origin, with emphasis on the latter.

We had more Eastern European women the past few years, definitely people from Romania, Bulgaria, some Polish. And yeah, you do notice kind of commonalities – they’re in for various things, but often for theft, fraud, those sorts of things. They often come here with partners or other people from their background, want a better life but things go wrong for them… (Helen, Diversity and Equality Manager)

Despite many practitioners readily describing CEEU women as ‘quiet’ and ‘distrustful of staff’, efforts to engage with CEEU women (and other FFNPs) to understand their priorities and preferred interventions were rare and ad hoc. In all three prisons, ‘making a difference’ via gender-responsive work frequently comprised one-to-one or group advice (e.g. informal conversations and check-ins, scheduled group or individual meetings), and referrals to further services. In practice, these often functioned as less ‘advisory’ and more spaces in which to position CEEU women vis-à-vis existing gender-responsive service provision, as well as guiding them toward better choices in respect to their relationships in line with practitioners’ moral evaluations of their gendered vulnerabilities:

We’ve got better this year, I think, at getting them into classes and services. So we have things like Family Matters ¹⁰ and various courses for domestic violence. And when you listen to them, that's the kind of things they need actually… (Ewa, FNLO)

Underlying this approach to gender-responsivity was a conceptual investment in the connection between the CEEU female prisoners and the British polity. For many practitioners, paternalistic engagement styles were tied to occupational commitments to deploying gender-responsivity to support FFNPs’ eventual resettlement in the UK – a principle which was understood to apply regardless of citizenship status. Gender-responsive work was often described as distinct from immigration enforcement, with CEEU women's relational vulnerabilities, such as experiences of gender-based violence, addressed in the same way as those of the UK national women. Ultimately, gender-responsive advice was often understood as a tool which can align CEEU women with normative standards of domesticity and intimacy, in linking them with services which, as one Diversity Officer put it ‘can help them assimilate to the British society’ (Millie, Diversity Officer). As this Foreign National Liaison Officer remarked:

I mean, so apart from their sentence to serve, some have immigration issues, but that's a totally different department which is immigration. I liaise with immigration, but I am not an immigration officer. We are here to support them as they progress through their sentence, like with any other prisoner. (Katheryn, FNLO)

Justifications for gender-responsive work with CEEU women, as shown in the above account, could be driven by practical considerations, just as much as an attachment to institutional and occupational principles. The positioning of gender-responsive support as aiding ‘assimilation’ in the UK was often articulated with an assumption that CEEU women were less likely to be deported because they were EU citizens. However, in practice women who were not of interest to the Home Office comprised a relatively small proportion of the CEEU cohort in all three prisons, as one charity worker noted:

For majority of the women, the Home Office is the biggest issue and EU nationals are not exempt from deportation by any stretch… Say, you come in and get caught shoplifting within a week, you are going to be removed. Before they couldn't do anything because you’re exercising your Treaty Rights, but they’ve changed that now. We’ve had people who’ve lived here more than 10 years but got deported because they couldn't show they were exercising Treaty Rights ¹¹ . (Mar, charity worker)

In turn, ambiguity about the immigration status of CEEU women created challenges for practitioners, especially FNLOs, who at once had to make sense of responses in terms of their working mandate as gender-responsive ‘advisors’ whilst also having to act as ‘immigration postmen’ (Kaufman, 2013). Among CEEU women caught in the immigration net, the logic of gender-responsivity was much more pragmatic, though no less paternalistic, with gendered needs conceived as problems to be reconciled with border control, rather than simply managed.

From value-driven ‘making a difference’ to pragmatic ‘balancing of needs’

Although a rehabilitative orientation was evident in the applications of gender-responsiveness in principle, this was adapted when approaching CEEU women considered for deportation, and who, in line with the ‘twin track’ policy (Robinson, 2013) were to be prepared for both release and potential removal from the UK. This was the most numerous sub-group of the CEEU women practitioners worked with. Commitment to resettlement has a long history as a key occupational impetus behind gender-responsivity (Bloom et al., 2003), and it can exist in conflict with bordering work (Kaufman, 2013). However, these two dimensions were often framed by practitioners as complementary, rather than contradictory, features of their work, especially when managing CEEU women with unresolved immigration status. For many practitioners, the ubiquitous threat of deportation compounded CEEU women's already complex gendered vulnerabilities with removal acknowledged as potentially returning some women to exploitative networks and separating them from families resident in the UK:

There is no one apart from us that has that holistic view of their situation. If she doesn't want to disclose that she's afraid to go home because she will be beaten up, the Home Office would never know. That's why you need to try and get to know what their issues are… and if they have language issues on top, things can get really complicated (Mar, charity worker)

Consequently, the perceived and practical interdependence of the gendered and immigration needs of CEEU women structured the nature of gender-responsive advice. In cases where removal was likely, but by no means certain, the role of practitioners centred on need balancing – structuring of advice and service provision to encourage CEEU women to manage their relational ‘choices’ in ways which pragmatically accommodated the risk of deportation. Many practitioners, especially FNLOs and Diversity Officers, recounted encouraging prompt exposure to immigration authorities, not only as a function of their role as immigration liaisons but as a gender-responsive measure, often by prioritising immigration insecurity on a par with ongoing relational and familial concerns. This emphasis on need balancing, rather than empowerment, reflected a broader context of increasing scarcity of legal advice resources available to foreign national prisoners (Griffiths and Yeo, 2021). It was pronounced especially clearly where the individual women's relational vulnerabilities, preferences on addressing them, and the likely prospect of removal were in conflict, as one Foreign National Manager outlined:

Bottom line – the quicker you engage with the Home Office, the quicker you’ll know where you stand with them. We had a lady recently from [HMP] Y – she had all her family there, couldn't speak English, very isolated. They don't have much in a way of immigration help there, and she got sent here [the foreign national hub] … and granted, she doesn't get to see them as often, but in the end she understood she has better support here for immigration, contact with people from her country and other things. (Rob, Foreign National Manager)

The uneasy pragmatism of gender-responsive management of CEEU women in the shadow of immigration enforcement was deepened by uneven distribution of resources. Despite being established to expedite deportation, the foreign national hub in practice concentrated resources to do with both immigration enforcement and gender-responsive support. Indeed, some practitioners saw their role as to advise CEEU women to transfer to ‘the hub’ to in order to both, resolve immigration issues swiftly and access adequate gender-responsive provision. This approach featured as a common response to women considered ‘vulnerable’. These were women, who, as well as being pursued by the immigration authorities, required intensive language support, culturally sensitive mentoring, or referrals to specialist services (e.g. anti-trafficking). This was especially pronounced at Prison B, where such expertise and services were scarce, despite housing a relatively large cohort of CEEU population. As this Foreign National Manager explained:

Originally, this was supposed to be fast-track immigration wing for deportation. But like HMP X for example, they will send you everyone they have. But you have to take into account the politics and it just goes on… But to be honest, it has been beneficial for them with problems with association or isolation. You put all that into one thing and it just becomes foreign national. It's a bit of both (Matt, Foreign National Manager)

The practitioners, aware of the realities of unevenly-spread resources and complexity of CEEU women's legal and social predicaments, often employed gender-responsivity as an imperfect method of positioning them ‘for their own good’, as much as a fulfilling their contractual obligation to support immigration enforcement. Such judgements were mostly pragmatic – informed neither by an allegiance to the goals of border control, nor a zeal to ‘empower’ CEEU women in line with the gender-responsive ideal. This was facilitated, rather than impeded, by the occupational cultures of paternalism and a rehabilitative orientation. Support for transfers to the ‘foreign national hub’ and greater exposure to immigration authorities were often legitimated as aiding CEEU women's progression toward release by emphasizing swift resolution of immigration cases. In practice however, transfer to the ‘hub’ has been found to constrain access to release preparation, and, in some cases, to impede family contact (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, 2017).

Gender-responsivity as a tool of exclusion

The idea of balancing needs can also have a wider effect of decontextualizing or sidelining women's relational vulnerabilities in ways which help justify exclusion. Gender-responsivity is theoretically designed to be inclusive by recognizing gendered circumstances underlying women's offending to support effective sentence progression and resettlement (Bloom et al., 2003). As Bosworth and Kaufman (2013, p.14) assert, such calculus relies on understanding of CEEU women as subjects ‘implicitly reformable and returnable to the community’. In some situations, where Deportation Orders were signed or removal imminent, implementing gender-responsive advice as a domestic-oriented endeavour was, as many practitioners agreed, unsustainable. This occurred in the context of limited appeal options and dwindling legal representation resources to challenge deportation decisions based on FOM/ Directive 2004/39/EC. In situations where the practitioners’ capacities to ‘make a difference’ were under question, gender-responsive advice was pragmatically repositioned in terms of aiding to prepare the women for their inevitable deportation. Such logics were frequently applied to women who could not demonstrate their right to remain under FOM, faced automatic deportation, or faced deportation following recall into custody. As this legal advisor stated:

When they’re on a Deportation or Removal Order, it's pretty much a done deal. I mean it's possible to challenge that based on EEA regulations, right to family life but there is no legal aid for that, so in many cases it's a non-starter (Caroline, legal advisor)

Discretionary judgements about the deportability of CEEU women had tangible impacts on decisions about the application and nature of gender-responsive support. In cases where appeal mechanisms failed and removal was certain, focus on balancing familial and parental responsibilities with speedy resolution of immigration status turned to pragmatic need re-orientation – recalibrating gender-responsive support to a more explicit focus on preparation for expulsion to the country of origin. This included an increased emphasis on telephone contact with family in the ‘home country’, linking with support agencies abroad, and advising women on discussing their deportation with children and families in the UK. This was often packaged through a sense of benevolence – as observed by one FNLO – ‘the best you can do is accept that you’re going to go and focus on preparing yourself for it’ (Aaron, FNLO). As this charity worker put it:

You remember Marina? Obviously, you know, very long sentence, came from Poland a few years back, wanted to settle in the UK. To be honest her offence is very serious, so I’m not surprised she got straight deportation. She wanted to fight it and got some help from Charity B, but in the end a lot of work we’ve done with her is around the worst-case scenario – making sure she has phone credit to call Poland, a place to go when she gets there… (Jayde, charity worker)

In such cases, where the practitioners’ capacity to govern CEEU women's relationships in line with the rehabilitative ideal was challenged by deportation powers, occupational values of ‘making a difference’ were reformulated and more commonly utilised to displace blame from practitioners to the women themselves. In such situations, previous gendered and moral evaluations of CEEU women underpinned by occupational values of paternalism and an instinct of inclusion give way to judgements of individualised, and gendered, blame for the women's own deportation. Previously recognised contextual factors (relying on exploitative networks, family and partners to survive as a new migrant) were side-lined or ignored, with women responsibilised for the impact of removal on themselves and their familial, maternal and intimate attachments. As this Foreign National Liaison Officer explained:

I think that if you come to a different country, you should probably try to adapt and not abuse the system. It wouldn't occur in my mind that I’m coming to the UK and commit a crime, I would expect that obviously I would have to be punished somehow, or if you don't want to be deported try to apply for British passport or make sure that you follow the procedures (Ewa, FNLO)

At the same time, practitioners attempted to find external sources of legitimacy for their decisions to re-align gender-responsivity with the aims of border control in response to women adjudged deportable. In nearly all interviews, practitioners tapped into state discourses emanating from the ‘hostile environment’ policy (Home Office, 2016), adjoining moral evaluations of female CEEU prisoners as ‘failed female migrants’ to actuarial notions of ‘public safety’ limiting the freedom of movement rights. This is not to say that practitioners concurred, in principle, with the actuarial calculus underpinning the management of FFNPs with Deportation Orders, nor that ‘empowering’ this sub-section of women had to involve challenging deportation decisions in every case. It is rather to suggest that the practitioners operated, for the most part, in circumstances which constrained their ability to effectively ‘care for’ CEEU women deemed by the state as ‘threat to public safety’, especially where it was clear that removal would have a detrimental effect on their relationships. Far from trying to live up to the ideal of ‘empowerment’, practitioners constructed priorities and acted on professional judgement of what constitutes valid gender responsive ‘work’, while battling limited resources (Crawley, 2006; Arnold, 2016). As one Diversity Officer told us:

You know, we try to support them the best we can, we look into how they ended up in a situation where they got themselves into trouble and… But there are women where you think “Do you deserve to stay in this country, you know, when you left your kids and come here do arrange sham marriages?” Obviously, that's what immigration will be looking at, it's not for me to judge (Kasia, Diversity Officer)

Such narratives often exemplified the ‘double stigmatisation’ of women subject to border control for both breaching immigration rules and failure to meet expectations of a ‘good female migrant’(Bosworth et al., 2018). However, respectable womanhood was unattainable for many of the CEEU women, who prior to their imprisonment, were trapped in socio-economic reality which propelled them to crime in the first place. Practitioners pragmatically invoked notions of ‘threat to public safety’ as a source of legitimacy to their institutional role as immigration liaisons, whilst carefully managing their own working values as officers charged with addressing the relational needs of CEEU women in their care. The process of pragmatically acting over the women ‘in their best interests’ in ways which aligned with the goals of immigration control served not only as an example of paternalism at work, but also calcified individualised forms of gendered judgement involved in the ‘social sorting’ of CEEU women in contact with immigration authorities.

Policy implications and future research directions

These findings have implications for the strategic direction of gender-responsive service provision for FFNPs. In the context of ongoing policy questions about citizenship, gender and imprisonment, recognition of the transnational nature of punishment is key to addressing the uneasy meshing of gender-responsivity and the ‘deportation regime’. The key implication of this article is that gender-responsivity should be more explicitly attentive to the nature of imprisonment which is no longer ‘bounded by the nation state’ (Aas, 2007; p. 522) and where immigration policy actively shapes the landscape of gender-responsive priorities and responses to FFNPs. With the end of the Brexit transition period, the social and legal situations of incarcerated CEEU women are likely to become more complex as some may find it difficult to evidence their right to remain in the UK under EU Settlement Scheme, while the protections of the 2004 EU Citizens Directive cease to apply (Migration Observatory, 2018). The continued, and expanding, use of deportation powers against incarcerated EU women suggests that adequate gender-responsive support requires emphasis on access to legal, as well as social and cultural, support – including robust legal representation to challenge deportation and administrative removal decisions. Correspondingly, our findings add urgency to the emerging policy questions about the reach and scope of gender-responsive support – particularly international resettlement (Prison Reform Trust and Hibiscus Initiatives, 2018). While, as we show, efforts to prepare the women for return to the country of origin formed a part of gender-responsive advice, this existed as a pragmatic response, rather than a result of strategic, and critical, engagement with the increasingly global nature of imprisonment (Turnbull and Hasselberg, 2019).

Findings of this study represent a snapshot in time, illuminating the effects of immigration policy landscape prior to the UK's exit from the European Union. Though institutional gender-responsive arrangements for FFNPs and their management within the prison-based deportation regime remain largely the same, future studies should examine the implications of the changing immigration regime for gender-responsive treatment of incarcerated EU citizen women, including those entitled to the Settled Status and those incarcerated after the end of the Freedom of Movement. Finally, this article offers a case study focused on application of gender-responsive support to CEEU women, which may not be generalised straightforwardly to FFNPs as a whole. The effects of the intertwinement of gender-responsiveness and immigration control on other groups of racialised FFNPs (e.g. those from former British colonies) bear closer intersectional examination, as some may enjoy fewer legal protections as non-citizens and for whom lack of effective gender-responsive and legal support while facing deportation may have graver consequences (Armenta, 2017).