Criminal Justice System: Women

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for initiating this debate on the Motion that this House takes note of the needs of women in the criminal justice system. One has to look at the reasons why women end up in prisons. These are varied and many, and largely depend on whether the woman is from a BAME community or the majority white community. However, the common factors are: violence at home by the husband or other family members; the poverty of the family; and, because of poverty, shoplifting, which becomes necessary to feed or clothe the family, particularly the children.

From reading the documents of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and from my own experience, there is perhaps a need for women judges to preside over these proceedings, since male judges may not comprehend why a woman is being charged. The law in such cases is blind as to which sex is being charged. Similarly, there may be a need for women lawyers and solicitors to appear on behalf of a woman being charged, and the Crown prosecutors should also be women. The best practice is to increase the number of women police in charge of such cases.

There are also considerable variations when women from BAME communities come to court to face trial. Translators should be present to translate questions put by prosecutors and judges. Some women from BAME communities do not speak or understand proper English. Many years ago, before there were translators in court, there was a case in which an Asian woman was asked whether she was guilty of killing her husband. The woman thought that the judge was asking whether she had made a mistake, because there is a word, “gulti”, that means “mistake” in her mother tongue, and she said yes. The judge thought she had pleaded guilty and put her in prison for a long time for murder. In the prison, some white inmates were very friendly and asked her what had happened and why she had killed her husband. She was able to explain that her husband had continually beaten her for the smallest error, or came home fully drunk and assaulted her. She suffered this over a long period until, one day, she could take this violence no more and, while her husband was sleeping, she murdered him. The women in the prison persuaded her and her solicitors to go to court to reopen the case, because she had not pleaded guilty and because she had been provoked to end his life by years of being beaten up. The Court of Appeal finally released her.

In the subcontinent, a woman’s position is still considered inferior. While I was a trustee of Oxfam, many years ago, I was given a very moving report and a letter from a social worker in India, Dr Jha, a lady with a great understanding of a woman’s position in an Indian family. I would be happy to give the full report to any noble Lord who would like to read it. It was a story of a family with a son and a daughter. The mother said that whenever she or her daughter fell sick, the local village quack was called in, but if the husband or the son fell ill, the trained doctor had to be called and they were hospitalised in the best hospitals. During mealtimes, the son and the husband ate first, and if there was meat, most of it was eaten by the husband and the son. The statement that the mother and the daughter made was, “Do you see why we look so frail and thin?”

The women are second-class citizens in many families. There is a belief in some families that the girl will one day be married, therefore there is no need for her to be sent to a good school for education. We hear of many cases in which rich or middle-class families are able to determine the sex of the unborn child and, if it is a girl, they get the mother to abort the child. In Pakistan, where, because of sharia, Muslim families have to give part of the family estate to the girls and the boys, many rich families do not get their daughters married but keep them at home until they die. I emphasise that such practices have considerably lessened because of new laws put in place by Governments in the subcontinent.

One last thing that needs to be said is that, despite the inequalities for women I have mentioned, there have been women Prime Ministers such as Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. In the UK, however, inequality and violence against all BME communities continues, resulting in deaths and divorces, and women escaping from home to shelters provided by the Government and by the work done by the Seven Sisters. In addition, husbands bring in brides from the subcontinent to become baby machines. They are expected by the family to cook and do housework, and are rarely allowed to go out.

In past years, I was involved in a project funded by the Government, through which female staff were able to train women to learn English and revive their skills of dressmaking, cooking, working as beauticians and using their henna painting skills. The result was that these women were able to speak English and communicate with their children. They learned to use computers and were able to read newspapers and reports from their countries of origin. They had their own income and did not have to ask for money from their husbands, and were able to provide more and more facilities for their children.

In the name of equality for women, I firmly believe that the Government should ensure that women’s rights are protected and that special training should be given to judges and lawyers when women appear in the courts.