118. Trauma And Justice: A talk with Criminologist, Hannah Simpson

Prison is often treated as the answer to women’s harm, but the numbers tell a different story. We sit down with criminologist Hannah Jane Simpson to unpack why women’s incarceration, mental health, trauma, and self-harm are so tightly linked and why “control first” institutions can make recovery harder rather than safer.

We talk plainly about what trauma looks like in real life: dysregulation, fear, inconsistency, returning to harmful situations, and struggling to communicate clearly. Hannah explains how these survival responses are too often misread by police, courts, and custody staff as unreliability or manipulation. From self-harm in women’s prisons to the everyday impact of surveillance and lack of privacy, we explore what gender responsive justice should mean in practice: healthcare that works, environments that reduce re-traumatisation, stronger family contact, and support that actually fits women’s pathways into offending.

We also dig into domestic abuse and coercive control in the UK, including why incident-based systems struggle to prove pattern-based harm and how “ideal victim” expectations can block accountability. Hannah highlights the need for consistent reporting routes, protective measures, and vulnerable witness support from the very start, not months later when survivors have already disengaged. We close by looking at Scotland’s anti-trafficking strategy and the risk of silencing sex workers when policy is built on assumptions rather than lived experience.

If you want smarter conversations about penal reform, trauma-informed practice, coercive control, and real-world justice, listen now, then subscribe, share the episode, and leave us a review. What part of the system most needs to change first?

Guest - Hannah Jane Simpson 

Host  - Louisa Nabi 

Transcript

Meet Criminologist Hannah Jane Simpson

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we've got Hannah Jane Simpson who is an accomplished criminologist with a Master of Laws in Criminal Justice and Penal Charge with experience covering the police courts and custody as well as policy reform. She has been a core aspect of developing initiatives in Scotland with the first juvenile and women-only custody suites and has written chapters with her most recent indulging in anti-trafficking highlighting sex workers' voices. Hannah, would you like to tell us a bit about you?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Of course, thank you for having me. My background is across criminal justice settings. I previously worked within policing and before that within the Scottish Court Service. Alongside my practitioner experience, a lot of my academic work focuses on institutional responses to vulnerability and penal reform. A lot of that really centres around the gap that exists between policy and the lived realities experienced by people moving through the justice system.

Trauma And Women In Prison

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Now, if we first discuss penal reform with an emphasis on mental health, we can see that women only make up 4% of the prison population in England and Wales, with 82% of women in prison reporting mental health problems. Now, how do you feel about issues of mental health? How do you feel that intersects with mass incarceration? And do you feel like these are being adequately addressed in reform conversations?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I think mental health and incarceration are deeply interconnected, particularly when we look at women in the justice system. A lot of the women entering prison already have extensive trauma. They've got histories that involve the basic abuse, sexual violence, addiction, poverty, childhood trauma. That's before custody even begins. What concerns me the most is that the prison environments are built around control, surveillance, restriction, and trauma recovery requires stability and autonomy and psychological safety. So I do think reform conversations are improving, particularly around trauma-informed practice. But I still think systems often underestimate how profoundly trauma shapes behaviour. And one of the biggest issues is that trauma responsees are frequently misunderstood or pathologized before they're recognized as trauma. Dysregulation involves trauma-informed training only goes so far if institutions aren't genuinely listening to these people.

Self Harm As Distress Communication

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Talking about self-harm, in terms of self-harm statistics, uh we can see how in women's prisons self-harm is nearly at nine times the rate of men's prisons as of March 2025. What does that tell us about whether prison is the right environment for many of these women?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

I think the self-harm statistics alone raise really serious questions about whether prison is the most appropriate environment for women, particularly non-violent women whose offending is linked to the trauma that they have experienced. The self-harm, a lot of the time it's framed as manipulative or attention-seeking, but most of the time it's a form of distress communication or a coping mechanism within an institutional an institutional environment that is so overwhelming. Prisons themselves were designed by a man for men, and that involves surveillance and restriction and lack of privacy. And for what for mil for women with histories of abuse or trauma, those dynamics mirror previous traumatic experiences and intensifies that emotional distress. So we need to move beyond asking why women self-harm and ask what conditions contribute to or worsen that distress.

Gender Responsive Prison Design

SPEAKER_00 4:21

So, how much of a difference do you think it would make having a gender-specific design in female prisons?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I think it can make a significant difference because equality and fairness aren't always the same thing. Treating women exactly the same as men ignores the different experiences of trauma and vulnerability and their pathways into offendance. Unfortunately, the current gender responsive design is about aesthetics, and that's not good enough. We need to understand how environments affect behaviour and well-being and rehabilitation. And that includes healthcare provision, trauma-informed spaces, family contacts, mental health support. Women for so long have been inserted into systems that are designed for men for men. It's been designed around male offending patterns and male needs. So gender-specific approaches are about creating a more effective and humane environment rather than just a softer environment.

What The Women’s Justice Board Does

SPEAKER_00 5:20

In an attempt to address these issues, the government in January 2025 created a women's justice board. For listeners who do not know about this new board, would you like to tell them what it's about?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah, the Justice Board was introduced as part of broader discussions about improving outcomes for women within the criminal justice system. The aim is to recognize women's experiences within justice systems and that they are different from men's and that responses therefore need to be gender responsive. It focuses on issues including diversion from custody, reducing reoffending, and improving support pathways, and really trying to reduce the number of vulnerable women entered in prison unnecessarily.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

If you were collaborating with the Women's Justice Board on a certain strategy, what would it be and what would be the first priority that you would put across?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

For me, the priority would be ensuring that lived experience is central to policy development rather than treated as a symbolic consultation. I think too often institutions are designed from the top down. They're based on assumptions about vulnerability rather than the lived realities of vulnerable people. And some of the most effective reforms happen when institutions stop speaking about vulnerable people and start genuinely listening to them. I think if we genuinely want long-term reform, we need to address the social and psychological drivers behind offending as well, rather than relying on punishment and containment.

Tackling Domestic Abuse Before Crisis

SPEAKER_00 7:08

And the government has pledged to half violence against women and girls by the year 2030. What policies and schemes would have to be put in place to ensure the success of this pledge, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Um I think achieving that requires more than increasing criminal penalties after the abuse has already occurred. We need earlier intervention, we need properly funded domestic abuse services, we need mental health provision and genuinely trauma-informed responses, and that's across policing courts, healthcare, education. There needs to be a greater public understanding of coercive control because abuse isn't always physical. The emotional intimidation, surveillance, isolation has devastating long-term effects. And one phrase we hear from victims repeatedly is they made me feel like I was going crazy, or I feel like I am going crazy. And I think that's really important because that's captures the psychological impact that coercive control has over a period of time. The constant manipulation, constant gaslighting can erode somebody's confidence, erodes their judgment and their perception of reality. So there needs to be much stronger consistency institutionally because responses to domestic abuse still varies hugely, dependent on resources and organizational culture and individual attitudes.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

I mean, we can yeah, we can see what a crucial problem domestic abuse is in the UK with, you know, the I mean statistics show that from March 2024 to 2025 there was an estimated 2.2 million women who experienced domestic abuse, with less than one in five female survivors feeling able to report it to the police. And those who did report, only 12% felt able to report it to the police. And there is a well-documented bi-directional relationship between domestic abuse and mental ill health. You know, coercive control itself causes anxiety, PTSD, depression. So a survivor does have a mental history, mental health history by the time she reaches the criminal justice system. And peer reviews published in 2025 found that police sometimes replicate the very gaslighting behaviours of abusers, questioning victims' experiences, favouring perpetrators' accounts, raising mental health as a way of discrediting reports.

Policing Culture And Trauma Misread

SPEAKER_00 9:48

How do you feel that this is embedded in policing culture from your experience?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I think there's absolutely been progress in policing around recognizing coercive control and trauma-informed approaches. I think it's important to acknowledge that. However, I do think some of those underlying cultural issues still exist. I think one of the difficulties is that trauma doesn't present neatly. Victims appear inconsistent, emotionally overwhelmed, they're fearful, they return to the perpetrators, and those trauma responses can be interpreted as unreliability rather than as indicators of prolonged psychological abuse. So I think there's still this unconscious tendency to view mental health history as undermining credibility rather than asking whether those mental health difficulties are consequences of abuse. And again, that's where lived experience becomes incredibly important because professionals can academically understand trauma, but there's a massive difference between procedural understanding and true understanding of how coercive control reshapes somebody's behaviour.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, so sure.

Coercive Control Without Visible Evidence

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I mean some forms of domestic abuse, such as emotional or verbal, uh, by its nature, is invisible. And there's rarely physical evidence for this. So, how do you feel like this interacts with a system that is still largely built around physical evidence?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

I think that's one of the biggest challenges surrounding coercive control cases because justice systems have always historically been much more comfortable responding to visible incidents, physical evidence. And coercive control happens over time. It's made up of repeated behaviors. Individually, they can appear minor, but collectively they create sometimes more fear, dependency, and psychological problems than physical abuse to us. I think the difficulty is that these systems still operate through an incident-based lens rather than recognising abuse as an ongoing pattern. And yes, victims might not have visible injuries, but that doesn't mean that the abuse is any less serious.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, I think there's a huge misunderstanding of different lived experiences with a massive focus on the stereotypical physical violent abuse. And there's a sort of constructed the concept of the ideal victim, you know, someone who behaves in the way the system recognises as consistent with victimhood. And how do you feel that a woman's mental health history or her reaction to trauma clashes with that image and impacts her way of able to be getting justice?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah, definitely the concept of the ideal victim is so important because systems a lot of the time unconsciously expect victims to behave in very specific ways. Whether that's calm, consistent, emotionally composed, or even fully cooperative, which is the most expected thing. But realistically, trauma doesn't present like that. Victims minimize abuse, they can delay reporting the return to perpetrators, and they struggle to communicate clearly. And that can appear irrational from the outside, but it actually makes complete sense when you are within an abusive environment. And unfortunately, when victims don't fit those idealized expectations, there's assumptions based around credibility and reliability rather than the recognition that these behaviours are actually trauma responsive.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Do you feel that these structural cultural factors mean that perpetrators often do avoid meaningful punishment?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

I think it absolutely creates barriers to accountability, particularly in coercive control cases where the abuse is difficult to evidence. If systems continue to prioritize visible evidence, ideal victim expectations, incident-based approaches, then there is a risk that some forms of abuse become minimized or misunderstood. And I also think that lengthy processes, re-traumatising court experiences, inconsistent responses, they can all contribute to victims disengaging from the justice process altogether. And that's again why understanding trauma properly isn't just a welfare issue, it's fundamental to achieving justice and accountability.

Practical Changes For Survivor Justice

SPEAKER_00 14:54

What kind of policies or schemes would you put them, would you recommend to put in place to ensure that this uh survivors do uh the justice that they deserve?

SPEAKER_01 15:05

I think as I mentioned, there has to be there has to be consistency, there has to be consistent re reporting methods, there has to be consistent follow-up, there has to be consistent protective measures, vulnerable witness measures from the get-go, not six months down the line when it's too late and the person who has experienced the trauma is disengaged.

Anti Trafficking Policy And Sex Workers

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Now, talking about female voices, would you like to talk a bit about your recent chapter and how it addresses current issues with anti-trafficking and sex workers?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Of course. The chapter is equally safe or equally silenced, and it explores Scotland's anti-trafficking strategy and examines the tension that exists between protective policy and the lived experience of sex workers. One of the key arguments is that policy discussions around trafficking can conflate trafficking and consensual sex work, which silences the voices of the people it claims it's protecting. So really the chapter advocates for greater inclusion of lived experience within policy development because I think some of the biggest institutional failures occur when systems are designed around assumptions. So ultimately it asks whether policy can truly be effective if the people most affected by it are not involved in shaping it.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Well, thank you so much, Hannah, for coming on and talking to us about your experience and your thoughts about domestic abuse and penal reform. It's been really helpful. Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed

Rebel Justice Closing And How To Support

SPEAKER_00 16:46

it. You're listening to Rebel Justice, the podcast from The View magazine. When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, with the government. We never think about it until it impacts our lives or those of someone close. Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system, whether as victims or women who have committed crimes, people at the forefront of civic action, who put their lives on the line to demand a better world. We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system with humanity and dignity. We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system, creating important change, such as judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers. You've been listening to Rebel Justice. If you'd like to support our work and receive four digital editions and one print issue a year, subscribe to The View for just £20. Make sure to follow us on social media or on Instagram at the View underscoreView. You've been listening to Rebel Justice. If you'd like to support our work and receive four digital editions and one print issue a year, subscribe to The View for just £20. Make sure to follow us on social media. We're on Instagram at the underscore view underscore magazines. And you can also find us on LinkedIn, X and TikTok. If you'd like to reach out to us directly, you can email inquiries to us at press at the view magazine.org. Thank you so much for listening.