Women's access to welfare after prison - an international comparison.

The aim of the proposed research is to undertake an comparative analysis of the services accessed by female prisoners following their return to the community and the potential of these services to reduce re-offending. This analysis will build upon the current ARC project in Victoria and a similar project in Scotland. Scotland and Victoria provide an interesting focus for comparative research, having similar populations, similar numbers of women imprisoned and similar increases during the last decade in the daily female prison population. Moreover in both jurisdictions initiatives are being introduced to enhance women's access to services when they leave prison. The purpose of the proposed research will be to develop and implement a framework for the comparative analysis of data on women's experiences after prison that will be generated by two funded studies in Scotland and Victoria.