Penal reform discourse for women offenders: Campaigners,policy strategies and ‘issue reframing’

Introduction

Studies of the policymaking process are not abundant in criminological literature (for a critique see Barton and Johns, 2013; Ismaili, 2006; John, 2012; Jones and Newburn, 2002), yet there are substantial contributions (see, for example, Fairchild and Webb, 1985; Rock, 1995; Ryan et al., 2001; Silverman, 2012; Stolz, 2002). As greater numbers of criminologists seek to undertake political analyses, ‘understanding the policymaking environment in all of its complexity [must] become more central’ (Ismaili, 2006: 255). Like those studying policy networks (see Marsh and Rhodes, 1992; Rhodes, 1988), constructionist researchers are concerned with the activities of claimsmakers – the politicians, activists, journalists and other individuals who campaign to identify particular conditions as ‘problems’ and in need of government attention (Ismaili, 2006: 255; see also John, 2012). This article focuses on those claimsmaking actors that can be said to work as part of the women’s penal reform network in England and Wales. Like networks operating in other policy domains, making arguments perceived as having traction with the political elite is a key part of their work (Mills and Roberts, 2012: 8), and they do so through variously undertaking a combination of lobbying, media work, research and campaigning on criminal justice issues (Mills and Roberts, 2012: 8). While individual mission statements, ideologies and choice of rhetoric may differ, the main ‘problem’ as far as women’s penal reform claimsmakers are concerned is the unnecessary overuse of imprisonment for non-violent female offenders (who make up the majority of the female prison population) and the lack of gender-specific policies in a criminal justice system dominated by men. Reformers operate in a political climate that has, since the 1980s, overseen ‘the evolution of a right-wing policy agenda which swept away the reformist and rehabilitationist approaches [with] a commitment to the belief that “prison works”’ (Wilson, 2001: 124). Recent years have, however, signalled the return of the rehabilitation agenda; from the Coalition Government’s early attempts in the Rehabilitation Revolution to the Transforming Rehabilitation ¹ agenda and the recently enshrined Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014.

Operating in a ‘field of struggle that is already structured by particular ways of seeing, and thinking about, punishment’ (Loader, 2010: 353) presents substantial challenges for penal reformers. In the politically contentious and ideologically polarised domain of criminal justice, it is argued that as ‘important as any other factor… is the quality of a group’s message’ (Davis, 1995: 39). As ‘decision-makers value or weight preferences differently depending on the context in which they are evoked’ (Jones, 1994: 5), penal reformers pursuing ‘public conversations’ must develop strong rhetoric to make their causes salient (Andsager, 2000). Their main barrier, however, is that ‘penal reform does not instinctively strike a sympathetic chord with large numbers of the public’ (Blom-Cooper, 1977: 7), and is considered as having little audience or readership appeal by journalists (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994: 149). Those seeking to influence policy reform for women are faced with a further barrier, in that social attitudes to male and female offenders differ (see Heidensohn, 1996). While penal reformers are able to mobilise the rhetoric of vulnerability in relation to women offenders (a discourse rarely available for men), this still flies in the face of entrenched social constructions of the ‘ideal woman’. Faith has argued that the deviant woman is a product of the politics of patriarchal relations and, when apprehended for crossing the boundaries of legality, women offenders are criminalised in equal measure for their betrayal of ‘Womanhood’ and ‘The Law’ (Faith, 2011: 1; see also Carlen’s (2002) concept of ‘double deviancy’).

Situated within the constructionist paradigm for social problems research (Best, 2013; Sasson, 1995), and building in part on the work of Mills and Roberts (2011, 2012) and their assessment of competing penal reform discourse, this article seeks to understand the different approaches and strategies, the messaging structures or frames, used by campaigners to influence politicians, the media and the public. It is argued that ‘framing decisions are perhaps the most important strategic choices made in a public relations effort’ (Hallahan, 1999: 224), and how the ‘definitional struggle is organised’ (Schlesinger et al., 1991: 399; see also Snow et al., 1986) is therefore a key focus for those analysing campaigner strategies. Drawing on diverse literatures across political science, journalism, criminology and sociology, and forming part of a wider investigation examining the political and communicative strategies of penal reformers as claimsmakers, this article will explore the different modes of discourse used to influence women’s penal policy within the ‘generally shrill tone of political and popular debate about crime’ (Loader, 2010: 351). Based on empirical data gathered from interviews with over thirty elite actors from politics and civil society – including directors of campaign organisations, former Justice Ministers, former senior civil servants, members of the House of Lords, social commentators and journalists from across the spectrum – it will also discuss journalists’ attitudes towards penal reform and their opinions on women offenders in crime news.

The claimsmaking game

Claimsmakers in the policy game work to influence the climate of opinion about an issue, with the ultimate hope of influencing government policymaking (John, 2012: 69). A great deal of claimsmaking work is focused on achieving interpretative change; successfully articulating that ‘X is a problem, and it is a problem of this sort’ (Best, 1987: 115). How an issue is constructed can therefore often play a role in determining what is, or is not, viewed as warranting a response from policymakers (Dorey, 2005: 8). Some problems might not be defined as such because they conflict with the dominant attitudes in society (Dorey, 2005: 11), or because they affect only a small number of people. The problems funnel is made narrower still due to the transitory nature of the ‘issue attention cycle’ (Downs, 1972), since ‘only a small number of “problems” [are able to] reach the consciousness of any segment of the public’ (Loseke, 2003: 18), the media, or politicians at any given time. While there now exists a growing number of claimsmakers (working in larger organisations or as individuals) dedicated to the pursuit of reform, the reality is that women constitute 5 per cent of the overall prison population. Of concern for penal reform campaigners is that a large number of issues develop into ‘lesser social problems’ (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988: 57). As this article will discuss, the ‘success’ of claims depends to some extent on coverage in the news media, yet journalists as ‘gatekeepers’ can ensure ‘that large segments of the social world are systematically excluded from representation and discussion’ (Chibnall, 1981: 87). The issue of women’s imprisonment arguably ‘remain[s] outside or on the edge of public consciousness’ (Hilgartner and Bosk: 1988, 57) and it is within this context that the social problem should be viewed.

Election cycles and changes in political administration present a very serious challenge to those pushing for policy reform, especially in the contentious field of criminal justice. It is argued that what the powerful elite (politicians, journalists, those enjoying structured access) define as crime or deviance reflects not only their own values, but also the collective norms and values of society – or at least the most vociferous segments of it (Henry, 2009). Those claimsmakers advocating a counter-message must therefore work hard to ‘seek contexts for their messages that may enable them to shape the public agenda’ (Schlesinger et al., 1991: 400). One effective means of accomplishing this is for political actors to frame their messages in a way that will resonate with policymakers and the public. Framing involves the purposeful selection of ‘some aspects of a perceived reality to make them more salient… in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition… [or] moral evaluation’ (Entman, 1993: 52), and is essential to ‘define the gist of the controversy for the public, the media, and other key political agents’ (Terkildsen et al., 1998: 47).

While penal reform claimsmakers remain hopeful that their ‘educative strategies’ will enable the public to make balanced decisions about crime control and criminal justice policies, they have little control over the main conduit of information, the news media, which in its various forms can spread populist and emotive messages. News is able to constitute an authoritative vision of social order through what sources are cited as saying (Ericson et al., 1989: 4), but this is reliant on the level of access that they are afforded. Clearly not all sources enjoy a status on the ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker, 1967), and this is further compounded by the scarcity of ‘public spaces’ relative to the number of views competing for recognition (Schlesinger et al., 1991). Journalists have considerable power ‘as selectors of which people can speak in public conversations, as formulators of how these people are presented, and as authors of knowledge’ (Ericson et al., 1991: 16). Much like claimsmakers engaged in ‘issue framing’, journalists similarly engage in a process of ‘news packaging’ (Ericson et al., 1991), producing stories within established frames and templates, or what Ericson et al. called the ‘vocabulary of precedents’ (1987). By constructing a framework through which the general public are able to understand the ‘crime problem’ (Commission on English Prisons Today, 2008: 1), the news media help to ‘define what we think about, what we see as “problems”, and the solutions we consider’ (Cavendar, 2004: 336; see also Soroka et al., 2012).

The construction and framing of women offenders

It is widely recognised that only a tiny fraction of events are deemed sufficiently ‘newsworthy’ to merit media attention (Greer, 2013: 150). ‘Newsworthiness’ is based on something particularly ‘audacious, violent or novel’ (Greer, 2010: 503; see Chibnall, 1977), and as women offenders make up just 5 per cent of the prison population their cases are automatically newsworthy by virtue of their rarity. One serious issue is that media outlets have the power to distort as well as inform (Indermaur and Hough, 2002) and this has implications for those working to reduce prison numbers for women (see Jewkes, 2004; Jones and Wardle, 2008; Kitzinger, 2000). The news media has not always acted as a ‘compliant partner’ (Hilton et al., 2013: 161) to penal reform campaigners, with journalists routinely translating and transforming the original messages into their own ‘secondary claims’, which are typically shorter and more dramatic (Best, 2013: 128). While male crime is almost treated as normal (after all, ‘boys will be boys’), female crime has been treated as an expression of masculinisation and a reaction to male authority (Faith, 2011: 43). Media depictions typically provide a confusing understanding of female criminality, where the objects of speculation are labelled as either ‘bad’ or ‘mad’ (Jewkes, 2004: 113). Representations of women offenders have therefore become stereotypical (Jones and Wardle, 2008: 57), able to act as ‘mental pigeon-holes’ (Dyer, 1993) for politicians, the public and the media alike. It is the most serious and unusual female crimes that have inevitably carried the most powerful associations. Their legacies have become ‘templates’, serving as ‘rhetorical shorthand, helping journalists and audiences to make sense of fresh news stories’ (Kitzinger, 2000: 61; see also Bennett and Lawrence, 1995; Birch, 1993; Jones and Wardle, 2008). So while the vast majority of women in contact with the law are property offenders, it is the few women who commit violent crimes that retain the greatest cultural visibility (D’Cruze and Jackson, 2009). While it is important to recognise that not all media coverage of women offenders is sensationalist or trivialised, it is clear that media narratives are complex (see Grabe et al.’s (2006) analysis of the ‘chivalry hypothesis’, for example). Certain journalists, predominantly those working on right-wing publications such as the Daily Mail, seem obsessed with violent female offending, and it can be difficult, therefore, for penal reformers to have what they perceive to be a ‘sensible’ conversation in the media. The reality is that most women go to prison for short periods of time ² having committed non-violent offences. ³ While the wider circumstances surrounding female offending will not be recited here, it is important to remember that women constitute a highly vulnerable group in the prison population:

As Hedderman reminds us, ‘these women are almost certainly not the people the media are thinking of when they call for tougher sentencing’ (Hedderman, 2012: 11, emphasis added), yet it is this reality that penal reform claimsmakers work hard to articulate.

Penal reform for women offenders

While Logan (2008) has identified the existence of a ‘feminist-criminal-justice-reform-network’ operating from the 1920s, the issue of women’s imprisonment gained a more focused and sustained momentum following the publication of a series of critical academic pieces from the late 1960s onwards (see, for example, Carlen, 1998; Carlen et al., 1985; Carlen and Worrall, 1987; Gelsthorpe, 1989; Heidensohn, 1985; Smart, 1976; Worrall, 1990), alongside the growing number of organisations and charities dedicated to penal reform. ⁴ This combined ‘network’ of critical articles, books, reports and inquiries over the following forty or so years came to the same conclusion: that the vast majority of women in prison did not pose a threat to society, and that the custodial estate should cater for the relatively few dangerous women offenders. Notwithstanding the growing calls to ‘do things differently’ for women, the movement received little in terms of government support, and reflecting New Labour’s ‘tough on crime’ agenda, the female prison population increased by 115 per cent between 1995 and 2010. ⁵

Despite its position as a ‘lesser social problem’ (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988), affecting only a few thousand women in England and Wales, and notwithstanding the outward political rhetoric on crime and justice, the critical mass of female Ministers within the Home Office ⁶ from the late 1990s did recognise the burgeoning female estate as an important social issue. Corcoran (2010) identified the existence of this ‘reformist consensus’ as one that embraced political, academic, third and voluntary sectors, and many penal reformers found themselves with a seat at Labour’s policy table. While policy work was under way within Whitehall (with a succession of research reports, the introduction of the Women’s Offending Reduction Programme in 2004 and Together Women in 2007), it was not until the series of suicides on the female estate in the mid 2000s that the ‘network’ had a real chance to shine a spotlight on the issue. Although not drawing explicitly on all previous research and inquiries, the government-commissioned Corston Report on Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System (2007) was certainly a culmination of this work. Acceptance (in most part) of the ‘Corston agenda’ alongside changes in legislation (such as the introduction of a gender duty in the Equality Act) led Corcoran to conclude that ‘in the closing months of its third term, the Labour party’s penal record seemed to be advancing towards a feminist-inspired, penal reductionist agenda’ (Corcoran, 2010: 234). The reality, however, is that the female prison population has not substantially reduced as Corston (and campaigners) advocated, ⁷ and there have been a number of suicides or ‘unclassified’ deaths on the female estate since 2007. ⁸

While it is clear that progress under New Labour was not without critique, campaigners feared that following the election of the Conservative-led Coalition in 2010, penal progress for women would be lost. Signalling a welcome change in outward focus at least, the much-awaited Strategic Objectives for Female Offenders was published in March 2013 (Ministry of Justice, 2013), alongside the establishment of another independent Women’s Advisory Board. At the time of writing (February 2014), there have been three Ministerial shuffles in the Department and responsibility for women in the justice system now falls at the door of Liberal Democrat, Simon Hughes MP. While this ‘renewal’ in focus must be viewed as a step forward for many campaigners, penal progress for women is still best analogised as Corcoran’s up-and-down journey of ‘snakes and ladders’ (Corcoran, 2010).

Methods and data

Little has been specifically written about the activities within the penal reform lobby (Wilson, 2001: 123), less still, if any, on the activities of those campaigning for women. While this research is based on semi-structured interviews with thirty-five elite figures from the world of politics and civil society – including eight directors of campaigning organisations working on the women’s agenda, four former Ministers, two former senior civil servants, four members of the Lords and eleven journalists working on crime and home affairs (including two former journalists, eight male and three female) – the focus of this article is primarily on the views of campaigners and the different modes of discourse, ‘messaging structures’ or frames used to influence the policy agenda.

Much like researching those without power, researching the powerful raises its own set of dilemmas and complexities, with issues relating to time, space and interpretation of data (see Ball, 1994; Burnham et al., 2004; Smith, 2006). A major preoccupation in relation to elite research is that of access. While it is certainly true that access is easier for those with existing links to those in power, the policy world remains largely shrouded in secrecy. That is because elites have ‘the power to create barriers, shield themselves from scrutiny and resist the intrusiveness of social research’ (Duke, 2002: 45). Due to the niche nature of the policy network and the limited participant pool available, it was not a complicated task to target campaigners or policymakers with relevant expertise. The selection of these participants was therefore criterion based or ‘purposive’. On this occasion, all campaigners who were contacted for an interview agreed to meet, and most politicians and officials were also willing to contribute. Despite best endeavours, the media world remained much harder to penetrate than the ‘corridors of power’. Here, sampling adopted more of a ‘snowball’ method, with participants providing details of others who they thought might be willing to contribute to the research. The major lack of cooperation came from the right-leaning tabloid press, yet journalists from the right-leaning quality press were also reticent to contribute. Employing semi-structured interviews, conversations were flexible, leaving space for emerging issues and concepts. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, and after employing a version of template analysis, a coding structure was applied to the data and revised as necessary. One final methodological note helps to explain the anonymity of participants. It is widely acknowledged that researching powerful people can lead to self-censorship (Walford, 2011: 4), especially if participants reveal politically sensitive information during conversations. While not the original intention, having been told information that would be unhelpful if attributed to certain people (and as a penal reformer researching from a feminist perspective), a decision was made to anonymise all participants.

The following section will highlight journalists’ views on women offenders and penal reform campaigners. The discussion will then focus on the political and communicative strategies of penal reform campaigners operating in this field.

Journalists on women’s penal reform

During the interviews with eleven journalists (including three former journalists), several key themes emerged: that the issue of ‘ordinary’ women’s offending was not deemed newsworthy; that journalists made assumptions about penal populism based on their newspaper’s readership; that campaigners as news sources often struggled with media access; that some journalists had adopted the role of campaigning claimsmakers; and that many campaigners lacked clear media strategies. Each of these themes will be discussed in turn.

To say that something is a social problem is to state that there is an issue in need of amelioration, no easy task for penal reform campaigners reliant on journalists to help spread their messages. During the interview process it became clear that certain crime and home affairs journalists (none female) did not view the rise in the female prison population as a problem needing to be ‘resolved’. When asked their thoughts on reform of the prison system, five journalists (working across the spectrum) confirmed Schlesinger and Tumber’s findings that penal reform has little audience or readership appeal (1994: 149). One journalist stated that ‘as a general view, I think people aren’t generally interested [in prisons and penal reform], and are slightly turned off by it’, while another questioned: ‘is anyone ever interested in penal reform? Do we even need to reform? Do people think of it as an issue?’ One journalist working on a right-leaning publication encapsulated this viewpoint when he replied: ‘If it’s just [an] ordinary criminal offender [that] goes through [their] sentence, doesn’t reoffend, how interesting is that?’ While such cases did not satisfy the journalistic news values of dramatization, titillation and novelty (Chibnall, 1977), stories involving violent women’s offending were clearly at the other end of the spectrum. One journalist working on a right-leaning publication explained that such cases were of interest to journalists because they were unusual: ‘It’s fascinating when you get a woman who has committed a particularly violent crime like Fred West’s wife, Rose.’

Price and Tewksbury have argued that

journalists’ sense of news values leads them to present public issues within certain frames, often reflecting broader cultural themes and narratives, that help define the fund of ideas available to citizens as they think and talk about politics and public affairs. (Price and Tewsbury, 1997: 177, emphasis added)

Echoing Chibnall’s belief that ‘crime news provides a chance for a newspaper to appropriate the moral conscience of its readership’ (Chibnall, 1977: xi), one journalist from a right-leaning publication believed that ‘Most surveys would show that the public think that more people need to be in prison, people get off too lightly, and so on. That’s the bulk opinion.’ Another journalist questioned ‘…this argument [that] there’s too many people in prison. Says who? It’s one of these received wisdoms amongst a certain group of people.’ While such viewpoints were articulated by those working on right-leaning publications, there was widespread recognition among those working for the left-leaning news media that campaigners faced difficulties working with certain sections of the press. One journalist working on a left-leaning publication explained that ‘the public care a lot about what goes on in prisons… [but] there are some [punitive] people, their views are articulated very strongly by some newspapers’. Describing what he saw as the contested nature of public opinion and that ‘actually when you talk to people, there’s a wide range of views’, he highlighted ‘this perception that there’s one view out there which is, you know, “lock them up and throw away the key, I don’t care”. But actually it’s not as simple as that at all.’ Consistent with Hilton et al.’s conception of the media as a ‘non-compliant partner’ (2013: 161), one broadcast journalist admitted that ‘some [campaigners] do struggle to get their voices heard in the mainstream media, partly because there’s a resistance among some in the media to the liberal ideas they have, the Howard League and the Prison Reform Trust’. One former journalist highlighted that while it may be easier for campaigners to work with those news outlets that shared a similar ideological standpoint, such publications do not enjoy the agenda-setting dominance of the right-wing media: ‘Penal reform groups… have fantastic trouble getting stuff in the Mail and those papers that do still influence the policy agenda.’

Despite some of the more punitive viewpoints expressed, there was a clear understanding among several journalists (predominantly, although not exclusively, working for left-leaning publications) of the broader social problem of women’s offending and imprisonment. Responding in line with arguments widely articulated in feminist literature, one male journalist working for a left-leaning publication saw

ambivalence in British society towards women offenders; on the one hand there is still an old fashioned sense of expecting a higher standard of behaviour from women… [but] on the other hand there is a sense, post-feminism, that women should be treated with equal severity with men when they have offended.

Touching on the notion of penal populism, the practice of politicians tapping into what they believe to be the public’s generally punitive stance on law and order, one former journalist was keen to stress that ‘there is some understanding that there are huge numbers of women in prison who shouldn’t be there, but that kind of gets subsumed in this general obsession with public perception and hardline penal policy’. As highlighted by Silverman (2012: 37), ‘it is a characteristic of the popular media that it likes to construct an on-going narrative which its core readership can slip on like a favourite coat’. Highlighting the news value of simplification, one former journalist believed that a major problem was that it was difficult for journalists to represent stories such as ‘women cutting themselves’ in the mainstream media because ‘they’re stories that take a lot of nuancing… and I think that’s one reason why you do get a lot of stereotyping shorthand. I think the mainstream media does like to deal with things that it can put in a box.’ Stereotyping enables journalists to frame their messages ‘with the least amount of lost motion, and it enables the receiver to comprehend what is being communicated with equal speed and facility’ (O’Hara, 1961: 194); opinion-forming tabloid newspapers were considered to be particularly adept at portraying the criminal justice system in ‘black and white terms’. While one journalist working on a right-leaning publication did not believe it was his job to ‘run some sort of campaign’, there was evidence of journalists adopting the role of campaigning claimsmakers. Interviews revealed that two journalists were actively working to challenge the prevailing discourse around imprisonment, with one campaigning specifically on women’s issues. Voicing frustrations about their struggles to place stories within their own publications, one journalist viewed his work as ‘a mission, without a doubt’, while another was clear that ‘the stories that get into the press are dictated by prevailing urban myths… so any contradictory story… it’s very difficult to challenge all of that, although you keep on trying’ (see Price and Tewksbury, 1997).

Responding to questions about the low levels of media access for campaigners as news sources, three journalists (from across the spectrum) did not view this as a problem. One journalist working for a right-leaning publication questioned the level of coverage that campaigners should naturally expect for what is essentially a ‘lesser social problem’ (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988), while another journalist working for a left-leaning publication did not view low coverage as ‘problematic, necessarily’. All journalists believed that penal reform campaigners could improve their media strategies. It is clear that journalists are more likely to use information that is provided to them in a news form that is consonant with their own ideological and professional values (Johnson-Cartee, 2005: 199). In advising on potential ways to increase coverage, all journalists described the need for a better ‘angle’ (novelty) and the requirement for more case studies (personalisation). One journalist working for a right-leaning publication was clear that ‘if you want a good story, you need to have something more subtle than just saying “we’re locking too many people up” … What is so original and so new about that? … The arguments are very familiar.’ For penal reform campaigners consistently accused of saying the same thing, one journalist believed that ‘if you can find a way of bringing something forward in a different way, you can start to get something in there’. It is widely acknowledged that the representation of crime largely focuses on specific cases rather than wider debates around causes (Greer, 2013: 146, emphasis added; Greer, 2012; Rock, 1973). This discursive space leaves little opportunity for readers to ‘fully appreciate, understand or interpret the implications of events’ (Greenberg, 2002: 194) and wider social problems. It also provides a serious obstacle to campaigners who want to talk in terms of policy, and not personality.

Campaigners on journalists

Penal reform campaigners were aware that when compared to other, more ‘worthy’, social problems, reform of the prison system is a relatively unpopular cause with a variety of barriers to success. In identifying such media barriers, campaigners articulated their recognition that the issue of women’s imprisonment is not considered newsworthy by most journalists (who have a general lack of interest in the subject), together with their reticence to engage in media work due to negative past experiences. Despite such obstacles, however, campaigners recognised that media coverage helps to improve their legitimacy and, in doing so, the ability to exert greater pressure on policymakers (Berry, 1999; Tichenor et al., 1980).

In spite of the steely resolve of some campaigners to achieve ‘a [sensible] discussion that’s got to be had in the eye of the media’, many others felt pessimism at the likelihood of this occurring. When questioned about the chances of her organisation receiving media coverage, one campaigner believed the situation to be ‘extremely negative… we don’t think there is any positive coverage’. All campaigners were acutely aware that stories involving the majority of their clients, the ‘ordinary’ women in prison, were deemed as mundane by most journalists. One campaigner admitted that ‘it’s not donkeys, it’s not children, it’s not attractive, that’s the bottom line. People don’t want to know.’ Another campaigner believed that ‘as soon as they [journalists] see the letterhead they think, I won’t bother with this rubbish… it just goes in the bin, in the shredder’. Whether explicitly referencing the term or not, campaigners were aware of what constituted newsworthiness, recognising that journalists’ news values often worked in direct opposition to the rhetoric they wished to pursue in relation to women’s imprisonment. Encapsulating the viewpoints of network colleagues, one campaigner concluded that ‘you’ve really got to fight as a penal reformer to get something of your agenda into the public domain’. While some campaigners believed that many journalists understood the social problem of women’s offending, others were keen to provide examples of reckless and sensationalised media representations. One campaigner explained that

it’s hard to get people to move on from certain types of questions and debates… the same questions, the same issues keep coming up again and again… it can be hard to get the media to move on to other concerns and issues.

Providing an example of ‘ignorant’ journalism in a local newspaper, one campaigner recalled a story ‘that Blackpool women’s centre was running head massage classes for prisoners… but that was all you saw, that’s all they pick up and so it’s a totally ignorant view’. Following years of negative experiences with journalists, one campaigner concluded: ‘you just think there’s no point in talking to these people because it’s not an avenue that you can use’. Highlighting the ill-fated blend of media disinterest and penal ‘punitivism’, one campaigner explained that the combination of an ‘uninterested’ or ‘punitive’ public presented ‘a serious limitation to any promotional initiative or activity’. As far as she was concerned, this often led penal reform campaigners ‘not to bother’ with media work.

At the time of fieldwork (2011–2012), and in the months prior to the House of Commons Justice Select Committee’s Inquiry on Women Offenders: After the Corston Report (2013), the March 2013 publication of the Coalition Government’s eight-page Strategic Objectives for Female Offenders and the subsequent formation of the Women’s Advisory Board, many campaigners began to publicly voice frustration about the stalling of the Corston agenda and the lack of government interest in women’s penal reform. Since the election of 2010, it had become clear that this policy area did not enjoy the same status as it had under the previous Labour Government. Consistent with Corcoran’s (2010) ‘snakes and ladders’ analogy, one campaigner described progress as ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Aware that the previously open door to the ‘corridors of power’ had somewhat closed, one campaigner explained that ‘it’s almost like the way in which we’re doing it, isn’t the way to be doing it anymore, because it’s going on deaf ears, it’s not being heard’.

Reform by stealth?

Highlighted during conversations with both campaigners and journalists, it is possible to identify the existence of a barrier between the news imperatives (and general lack of interest) of many journalists (mainly, although not exclusively, those working on right-leaning publications) and the wider social problem of women’s offending and imprisonment. As a result of their negative experiences with journalists, several campaigners explained that they had limited (or no) media strategies, choosing to pursue their objectives out of the media spotlight. One campaigner questioned use of the media at all, arguing that due to the sustained negative media coverage of women offenders, ‘reform by stealth’ was ‘the only show in town’. Highlighting that most members of the public are unaware of the ‘one-stop-shops’, the network of women-only centres designed to divert women from custody or help with resettlement on release, another campaigner explained that the development of ‘the women’s centres themselves have been done by stealth’. In seeking avenues to ‘temper the enthusiasm for excessive punishment’, Loader (2010: 349) similarly deliberated the feasibility of ‘cultivating indifference’. Such a strategy requires political actors to find ways of (re)insulating penal policy from the heat of public opinion and outrage (Loader, 2010: 362; Pettit, 2001). Reminiscent of the Post-War era of the ‘platonic guardians’ (Loader, 2006), this strategy was popular among many campaigners whose experience of the policymaking ‘reality’ was that, although by no means always the case, ‘reform often happens through quietly changing governmental practices in ways that bypass public discourse’ (Loader, 2010: 353). It is noteworthy that three journalists (all working for, or having worked for, left-leaning publications) were sympathetic to such ‘stealth’ strategies. One believed that penal reform campaigners should abandon media work, while the others believed it should receive less focus than traditional forms of lobbying. Consistent with the comments of campaigners who believed the media and public to be generally ‘uninterested’ in women’s penal reform, one former journalist concluded that ‘you can do things [by stealth] for women, because they won’t regard it as news’. Tapping into the penal punitivism debate, another journalist was clear that ‘given the high octane nature of much media coverage it would make sense for reformers to press for change at a policy level rather than through the media’.

While acknowledging the crucial activities that take place behind closed doors, it is, however, important to note that since the ‘platonic guardians’ operated in the corridors of power over half a century ago, the public sphere has experienced a paradigm shift. We now live in a 24-7 ‘mass-mediated reality’ (Nimmo and Combs, 1983), with meaning socially constructed through a process often dominated by the mass media (Johnson-Cartee, 2005: 4). Despite admitting that women offenders tend to ‘get it worse’ in the media, eight out of eleven journalists were clear that campaigners should not avoid this work. One journalist from a left-leaning publication was ‘staggered’ that some campaigners viewed ‘stealth’ as an effective tool of lobbying. One former journalist similarly believed that ‘the idea that you can do cosy little deals behind closed doors… is pie in the sky’, while another thought that such work was ‘completely mad’. He went on to argue that ‘The only reason why Ministers ever do anything is because they’re embarrassed by public opinion.’ Given the climate within which they operate, is easy to understand why penal reform campaigners may wish to operate behind closed doors, yet, consistent with the above viewpoints, social scientists have also warned about the intensification of ‘stealth’ strategies. Green, for example, has questioned ‘the folly of doing good by stealth’; and that in attempts to ‘insulate’ penal policy from the public glare, there is little allowance for prevailing attitudes to be challenged, and hopefully improved (Green, 2009: 529). And Ian Loader, in response to the ‘cultivation of indifference’ strategy described above, has similarly questioned its practical workability. While it is undoubtedly true that working in this way creates ‘the space and cover for the administrative delivery of more moderate policy and workable outcomes’ (Loader, 2010: 361), he conceded that it is ‘a risky enterprise riddled with “bear traps” and the constant fear of scandalous exposure’ (p. 361).

Where next, then, for those campaigning on the ‘lesser social problem’ (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988) of women’s imprisonment? One journalist-turned-campaigner was clear that ‘the media have to be part of any strategy… [but] using clever tactics… being savvy, is part of getting your message out there’. As far as he was concerned, penal reform campaigners needed to develop more sophisticated rhetoric and messaging structures. Campaigners as claimsmakers needed to understand and consider more carefully the importance of framing: ‘how you need to have a political frame, an economic frame, a cultural frame… and learn lessons from other places where they’ve managed to frame things in a different way’. It would seem, therefore, that since ‘total secrecy’ or ‘reform by stealth’ is widely considered (1) a risky enterprise and (2) no longer (completely) possible, campaigners wishing to pursue ‘public conversations’ may seek to ‘patrol the facts’ (Ericson et al., 1989: 18) in alternative ways.

Strategic issue framing?

Considering the claimsmaking process from a policy perspective, Richardson has argued that as policymaking is often carried out in several ‘venues’, there may sometimes be incentives to abandon one restricted (and perhaps well-trodden) network in the search for other ways to ‘shift’ the discourse (2000: 1011). Those campaigners that wished to pursue ‘public conversations’ were keen to stress that strategic issue framing was an integral part of their work. One campaigner was clear that: ‘we’ve tried to work out better what some of the key messages are that we were trying to get across… And so it was about trying to find a way of reconnecting penal reform with values that people would go, actually I support that.’ While it is fair to say that the public face of penal reform shifts depending on the audience and context (Mills and Roberts, 2011: 39), Mills and Roberts (2011, 2012) determined three established frames of discourse commonly adopted by penal reform campaigners in their public strategies:

Such frames are able to provide a useful basis for the investigation of penal reform discourse as it relates to women.

Keen to stress that tough or ‘crime fighting’ strategies were the most effective with policymakers and the media, one campaigner expressed frustration with colleagues. As far as she was concerned, some campaigners needed to

stop this constant focus on women as victims. We know they’re victims, but the language that some people use is very alienating and inappropriate… if you want to bring the government with you, and the media, there has to be a better balance. And constantly wheeling out women to tell their dreadful stories doesn’t always work.

Another campaigner was in agreement that ‘there is a danger that if you paint people as victims that turns off some groups who don’t like that message’. For those adopting ‘crime fighting’ discourse, being savvy therefore meant employing ‘a messaging structure that doesn’t just irritate and annoy the people you are actually trying to get on board’. ‘Tough’ strategies required campaigners to successfully articulate that community alternatives were by no means a ‘softer’ option for women. To one campaigner, such discourse involved a move away ‘from simply talking to Hampstead liberals, people with titles, and ladies with hats who ate cucumber sandwiches’ and a concerted shift towards ‘addressing the values of middle England’.

Other campaigners (including a former senior civil servant) described the way forward as one that focused on economic considerations in the financial waste of imprisoning large numbers of non-violent women. The 2008 report from the new economics foundation (nef) was touted as one basis for this strategy. One of various studies that included a cost-benefit analysis, ‘Unlocking Value’, aimed to provide a dispassionate, financial argument for the increased use of women’s community alternatives. While viewed critically by some for its untransparent methodology, the report argued that for every pound invested in alternatives to prison, £14 worth of social value is generated to women and their children, victims and society over ten years, and that the long-term value of these benefits is in excess of £100 million over a decade (nef, 2008: 4). One campaigner was exasperated that more had not been done to champion the conclusions of the research, as it hadn’t ‘even gathered dust on the shelves yet’. Other campaigners believed that pursuing economic arguments had appeal across the political spectrum, attractive to both right-wing politicians and journalists. In ‘playing the Treasury card’, Loader has argued, such a claimsmaking strategy ‘speaks to a language people understand’ (2010: 361). ‘Managerial’ rhetoric was also supported by one journalist from a left-leaning publication who believed that campaigners would make more progress in the right-wing press if they ‘made the economic argument, because they’ll [certain journalists] understand it… talk through their pockets’. While this argument laudably aims to remove emotion from criminal justice discourse, Loader reminds us that its success depends on citizens coming to the conversation as taxpayers rather than victims, or (of increasing pertinence today) as potential victims (Loader, 2010: 361).

In their research on ‘reform sector strategies’ Mills and Roberts concluded that ‘humanitarian’ discourse was not viewed as a universally viable rhetoric by campaigners. This was mainly due to concerns about the political climate and fears that it could potentially undermine relations that already existed (2012: 29). Mills and Roberts therefore determined that ‘pursuing an agenda at a considerable distance from the current policy agenda… is unlikely to be considered feasible or desirable by all those concerned about high prison numbers’ (Mills and Roberts, 2012: 29). That is because ‘failure to talk tough on crime [has become] akin to political suicide’ (Newburn and Jones, 2005: 74), and, as one campaigner explained: ‘the policymakers are frightened to death of what will come onto the papers if they are seen to take an unequal approach or a soft approach’. Again, as with economic arguments, ‘humanitarian’ discourse offers little to those victimised by, or anxious about, crime (Loader, 2010: 357).

Yet in direct contrast to the conclusions articulated by Mills and Roberts, there is evidence that some penal reform campaigners are already pursuing (or are keen to pursue) ‘social justice’ rhetoric. Unlike other messaging structures that aim to work within the dominant media–crime paradigm, social justice discourse seeks to explore the wider social problem of women’s offending and imprisonment. Keen to move the conversation from its emphasis on penal solutions for social problems, one campaigner explained that ‘if you take away the criminality it gets heard, it’s a social justice issue’. Another campaigner also described work in other policy domains (such as health and welfare), rather than the continued focus on traditional penal reform discourse. Such campaigners believed that as far as women’s offending and imprisonment was concerned, large numbers of the public ‘got it’ and were not ‘turned off’ (as articulated by some journalists) by social justice messages. Highlighting empirical research that consistently finds people less punitive than the media or politicians maintain (see Roberts et al., 2002), and pointing to previous polls ⁹ that purported to demonstrate public backing for increased community alternatives for women, such campaigners believed there would be support for a more overtly feminist agenda. If they did pursue newspaper coverage (one campaigner did not), it was often with their ‘friends’ on the more ‘ethical’ left-leaning publications, but media work was largely viewed as secondary.

Conclusion

This article has examined the ‘lesser social problem’ (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988) of women’s imprisonment and the different strategies and issue frames adopted by campaigners in their attempts to influence the policy landscape. In considering matters of ‘news packaging’ vs. ‘issue framing’, this article has highlighted some of the barriers that exist for penal reform campaigners in their attempts to pursue ‘public conversations’. It is easy to understand why, despite the sympathetic journalists operating in this area, there is a tendency for some campaigners to work away from the media spotlight and focus their efforts on more traditional forms of private lobbying. Yet living in a 24-7 ‘mass-mediated reality’ (Nimmo and Combs, 1983), it is fair to say that the claimsmaking battle is now ultimately won or lost in the media. How penal reform campaigners interact with media professionals is therefore of crucial consideration. In order to successfully insert their claims into news publications and influence ‘the fund of ideas’ (Price and Tewksbury, 1997: 177), it is clear that campaigners must ‘understand the conventions and values that drive journalists’ (Wallack et al., 1999: 40). Framing decisions are consequently one of the most important strategic choices that campaigners must make (Hallahan, 1999).

In considering several issue frames used in relation to the reduction of women’s imprisonment (‘crime fighting’, ‘managerialist’ or ‘humanitarian’ discourse), this article has highlighted that campaigners operating as the penal reform network differ in their preferred choice of rhetoric. Those pursuing ‘crime fighting’ or ‘managerialist’ frames seek to pursue their strategies within the dominant media–crime paradigm, while those pursuing overtly ‘humanitarian’ language wish to ‘shift’ the current discourse to an agenda that centres on social justice. Both strategies have clear implications for the types (and volume) of news coverage that campaigners are likely to receive. In their research on ‘reform sector strategies’, Mills and Roberts concluded that the future of penal reform may entail ‘moving beyond the concerns of current policy agendas’ (2012: 31) to the adoption of new frames of discourse in attempts to influence politicians, the media and the public. In seeking to examine what approaches connect penal reform with ‘the people’, there is a pressing need for more empirical research on public and political opinion as it relates to women offenders. Adding a gendered perspective to an under-researched area, this article forms part of a wider interdisciplinary investigation examining the political and communicative strategies employed by women’s penal reformers as claimsmaking actors.