The impact of prison for women on the edge: Paying the price for wrong decisions

A small number of previous studies have investigated the impact of custody on reoffending by males and mixed sex groups, but this is the first to investigate the impact of prison exclusively on women. Propensity score matching (PSM) using information on over 3,000 women’s current offense and criminal history was used to create a sample 320 women who had been sentenced to prison who were equivalent on all measured variables to 320 women who received a community sentence. Twelve months after release those from prison were found to have committed significantly more and more costly offenses and also to be more likely to be sent back to prison. The overall additional cost of prison in this sample was estimated to be £3.6 million, and this was a conservative estimate