3 The use of solitary confinement (segregation) in Aotearoa New Zealand’s women’s prisons “They should [put in place] something to show progression. They should take risks with us. Reward us and then loosen the reins.” [segregated woman] 3.1 Prison Segregation Units As noted, Segregation Units in their various forms (see below) in women’s prisons were similar in design and material conditions to those in prisons for men, as were administrative routes into segregation and the guidelines for placements in these units, despite the acknowledged gendered differences in needs and challenges. This is an important point because a very high proportion of women, as noted in the previous section, arrive at prison with histories of trauma and high health needs, rendering them more vulnerable to the pains of imprisonment in general, and the pains of solitary confinement in particular. Women in segregation: the data The data provided to this review indicates that, as was the case in 2017, women were segregated at a far higher rate than men: in 2019 there were 147 segregation placements (some may involve the same person) per 100 men prisoners, compared to 255 segregations for every 100 women prisoners.28 The figure below provides a prison-by-prison breakdown of the use of segregation. All three of the women’s prisons (marked (W) in the graph) were at the top half in terms of their use of segregation, with ARWCF being second highest of all prisons in its resort to the extreme tool of segregation. 28 22 This representation of the data compares a cumulative measure with the number of segregation placements in 2019 against a snapshot measure (the number of prisoners in general population at 31 December 2019).