Women in Prison

Who we are

Women in Prison (WIP) is a national charity that delivers support for women affected by the criminal justice system in prisons, in the community and through our Women's Centres. We campaign to end the harm caused to women, their families and our communities by imprisonment

Our Story

Our history is at the root of who we are today: an organisation centred on women’s experiences and ambitious for radical change. WIP is built on lived experience after our founder Chris Tchaikovsky was moved to take action by what she experienced and saw when imprisoned in HMP Holloway in the 1970s.

During Chris' time in prison, a woman died after setting fire to her own cell.

Chris saw that the specific needs of women in prison and the damaging effect prison sentences were having on women were completely missing in public and political discussions. So, in 1983, alongside international criminologist Pat Carlen, Chris founded Women in Prison, and pushed hard to expose this scandal and campaigned for change. Our founders wanted to increase awareness of the lives of women behind the gates of our prisons - lives marked by sexual abuse, poverty and violence.

In the early 1990s, WIP was able to expand beyond campaigning to begin delivering direct support to women affected by the criminal justice system. We started off by focusing on providing support in prison and then developed our support for women in the community after release.

Chris passed away in 2002 but WIP continues to build on the legacy of our visionary founder. Read more about The life of Chris Tchaikovsky by WIP's Former Chair of Trustees, Yvonne Roberts.

Taking the most hurt people out of society and punishing them in order to teach them how to live within society is, at best, futile. Whatever else a prisoner knows, she knows everything there is to know about punishment because that is exactly what she has grown up with. Whether it is childhood sexual abuse, indifference, neglect; punishment is most familiar to her.

— Chris Tchaikovsky

Our culture and values

Our Vision

Our Vision is of a society which no longer accepts the structural inequalities that lead women and girls into contact with the criminal justice system. 

Our Purpose

We work collaboratively in the community, custody and in prisons with women and girls facing structural inequalities through programmes and campaigns that challenge and change oppressive systems.

Our Values

Change can happen

We are resilient and driven because we know that transformational change must and can happen for women who are facing criminalisation.  

We actively strive to be feminist and antiracist

We recognise, acknowledge, include, and celebrate the power, strength and diversity of women and challenge oppressive systems of privilege.  We are committed to end racism in all its forms and to challenge where we see inequality and injustice.    

We represent the world we want to see

We listen and learn with each other and the communities we exist for and continuously challenge ourselves so that our work, and the ways that we work, represent a world where all women are met with care, dignity and compassion.    

We build women’s collective power

We work courageously and collaboratively to share power and voice in our programmes and influencing work and build the power as women together, to challenge structural injustice.    

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Women in Prison (WIP) is committed to building and valuing diverse teams and taking positive action to promote equality and challenge unfair and unlawful discrimination. We recognise that women may experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination based on their sex and additional, real or perceived characteristics, including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion, sexual orientation, social-economic background, immigration status, caring responsibilities, spent convictions or trade union membership.

WIP works to tackle discrimination and the structural inequalities women experience. We are committed to embedding diversity and inclusion in all areas of our work, including recruitment, and aim to reflect the diversity and excellence of the women that we work with. We actively encourage applications from women from a variety of backgrounds, and with a range of skills and experiences. We are particularly interested to hear from women from Black, Asian and minoritised communities and women with lived experience of the criminal justice system who are underrepresented in leadership positions in our sector.