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31 Oct 2025

Yesterday, (30 October 2025), the Ministry of Justice published a quarterly update to its Safety in Custody statistics.

The update reveals:

  • Although there has been a small decline in the number of incidents of women in custody self-harming from June 2024 to June 2025 (from 20,834 to 20,174 incidents a year), the numbers remain deeply concerning.

Between June 2024 and June 2025:

  • There were 20,174 incidents of self-harm in the women’s estate, an average of 54 incidents per day.
  • 1,174 women in custody self-harmed, doing so on average 17.2 times per year, in comparison to 4.5 times a year for men. Repeat incidents of self-harm remain a significant and disproportionate issue for women.
  • One third of women in custody self-harmed, which is more than double the proportion of men self-harming.
  • While the rate of incidents has declined slightly for women over the past 12 months, from 5785 incidents to 5,714 incidents per 1000 prisoners, it remains over 8 times higher than the rate of incidents for men (figure 1).
Safety in custody Self-harm graph Oct 2025

Wider analysis: A spotlight on young women

The latest disaggregated data reveals that young women in custody are disproportionately affected by incidents of self-harm. In 2024:

  • Young women (18-24) accounted for over a third (35%) of all recorded self-harm incidents in women’s prisons.
  • Young women (18-24) who self-harmed did so on average 33 times per year, almost double the average for women across age groups.
  • This problem is even more acute for young women aged 18-20 who make up 2% of the women’s prison population but account for 17% of self-harm incidents, self-harming on average 45.8 times a year.

Indy Cross, Chief Executive of Agenda Alliance, responds:

'Yet again, the safety in custody statistics clearly demonstrate a consistent, worryingly high rate of women self-harming in prison.

These figures have become depressingly normalised, glazing over the reality that self-harm is a response to serious mental distress, with the prison system unequipped to deal with this, and, even worse, exacerbating this distress.

It is important to realise that behind these figures are over a thousand real women currently trapped in a prison system that is harming them. The women have either entered prison already suffering from acute mental illness and trauma, which the prison system is making worse, or they may have developed mental health conditions due to the harmful prison environment that is not designed with their needs in mind. The fact that repeated incidents are so high speaks to a chronic lack of support from the prison system.

The women need specialist, well-funded support in the community, not a custodial sentence. We know that women who have distinct needs (due to mental health, trauma, domestic abuse, and poverty, for example) that have been consistently overlooked, are criminalised. They have been let down by the very systems that are meant to protect them, and prisons add to this trauma. Prisons need to respond to these specific needs in a way that is age-, gender-, trauma-, and culturally-informed, rather than simply duplicating an approach that is designed for adult men.

This is especially the case for young women. Our previous research has shown that this age group demonstrate some of the highest levels of self-harm of any in prison, and the data confirms this. With such a high level of repeated self-harm amongst young women, we are seriously concerned for their safety and question the role of the prison service in upholding its duty of care.

The work of the Women’s Justice Board is well under way, with a particular commitment to tackling the acute challenges of young women in custody, including their levels of self-harm.

In its impending Young Women’s strategy, we need to see a clear, targeted, approach for young women in prison. This strategy needs to be cross-cutting, committed to overcoming silos, and supporting transitions from youth to adult estates, to ensure it meets the needs of those young women in custody. The strategy should also include approaches that help them to remain in their communities instead, supported by robust, specialist services designed to meet their specific needs.'

Further information:
  • Agenda Alliance's Young Women's Justice Project, originally developed in partnership with Alliance for Youth Justice, is the first national project advocating for the specific needs of young women aged 18-25 in contact or at risk of the criminal justice system.
  • In 2023, we published 'A Call to Action', which highlighted that, in 2022, the number of self-harm incidents amongst young women aged 21-24 in custody surpassed all other age groups.
  • We have set out our vision for the Women's Justice Board, where we state the urgent need for it to take action on racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system.

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