On Saturday, 29 June 2019 get together with your friends to host a meal and support our work with vulnerable women We are excited to invite our friends and supporters to take part in LACW’s annual Justice Dinners. These are our major fundraising event where we ask you to get together with your friends to…
LACW is committed to supporting our clients to get bail and stay out on bail. This is how women keep their kids and their housing. It’s also how a sentencing court can see what a woman can do with case management support. See the attached article regarding the rising numbers of unsentenced prisoners swelling Victoria’s…
Three years ago, we responded to the growing numbers of women in prison, especially women being held on remand, pre-sentence by developing Victoria’s first dedicated criminal defence practice for women. We get women out on bail. We get them linked to services and that means we get them better outcomes at the point of sentence.…
International Women’s Day 2017 has been a time for LACW for reflect on the work achieved in the last 12 months and the considerable work that we see ahead. Our Principal, Jillian Prior was a panelist at two excellent IWD events this year. At the Women’s Health West breakfast, Jill joined an impressive line up…
Some of us working in the criminal justice system have seen Victoria Police’s changing attitudes to family violence. Police now seem more likely to respond to and charge those accused of family violence. At LACW we are also observing a significant number of women, victims of family violence themselves, on the receiving end of police…
Recent research confirms what many of us working in the criminal justice system know to be true: women exiting prison are far more likely to return when housing issues and substance abuse are not adequately addressed. LACW commends programs that support women in prison and on release but our challenge to government is to fund those…
The Law Institute of Victoria has profiled LACW to coincide with our official launch.
Done by Law program on the spike in rates of imprisonment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Victoria with special guest, Ruth Barson from the Human Rights Law Centre, 3CR Community Radio.
These earlier news articles track the slow and steady rise in rates of imprisonment for women, as well as illustrating many of the circumstances that drive the criminalisation of women: ‘Pressure on womens jails’, The Age, 20 March 2011 ‘The women inside’, The Age, 22 June 2010
See a summary of research and developments around women and prisons in Victoria between 1970 and 2010, via the Australian Prisons Project, UNSW. ‘Addressing women’s victimisation histories in custodial settings’, Australian Institute of Family Studies, December 2012. ‘Responding to the children of women in prison: Making the invisible visible’, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2011.…