It all started when Edwina Grosvenor spent an hour with two heroin addicts at a drug rehabilitation centre in Liverpool, almost 30 years ago.
Her parents – Natalia and Gerald Grosvenor, who was one the richest men in the UK and the sixth Duke of Westminster – decided to take her to the centre at the age of 12 or 13 to show her that there was a world beyond her privileged bubble. “At that moment I learned about empathy,” Lady Grosvenor said.
On Tuesday the vision she traces back to that childhood visit, to support people in the prison system, especially women, culminated in the opening by the Princess of Wales of the first ever project in the UK to keep women in the criminal justice system out of prison.
The drug rehab facility in Liverpool was on Hope Street. She has given the new project the same name: it is a pioneering new 24-space residential scheme in Southampton designed and developed by the charity One Small Thing, working closely with Snug Architects and women with lived experience of the justice system.
It offers a community alternative to prison for women so their children can remain with them and to help them break the cycle of reoffending and serving repeated, often short prison sentences.
Women can be placed there when they are subject to a community order, when on remand or after being released from prison.
The light and spacious building, constructed in pale brick and light wood, is for women who would otherwise be imprisoned unnecessarily due to a lack of safe accommodation or concerns around their wellbeing.
It is being independently evaluated over the next few years and if successful, it is hoped the model can be rolled out nationally with the aim of dramatically reducing the number of women who end up in prison.
Even very short prison sentences can have a detrimental impact on families, separating an estimated 117,000 children from their mothers each year, often into emergency foster care. It is estimated that a third of women in prison have themselves been in care.
This group of women overwhelmingly report a long history of trauma in their lives, with 60% of women in prison reporting domestic abuse and half entering custody with a substance use issues.
Each Hope Street resident will receive tailored programmes designed to address the issues that led to their becoming involved with the criminal justice system: skills, education, training and support when they leave.
Along with the visit to the Liverpool drug rehabilitation centre, Grosvenor said the sudden death of her father in 2016 had been another seminal moment for her, which she described as “post-traumatic growth”.
“My father’s death was a ‘sink or swim’ moment and it made me feel ‘right it’s now’ to make a project like Hope Street a reality,” she said.
Now 41, Grosvenor is a criminologist, philanthropist and prison reformer. She combines her philanthropy with work on the frontline of prisons and has previously worked at both Kathmandu central prison in Nepal and Styal prison in Cheshire.
Lilly Lewis, the women’s involvement adviser for One Small Thing, said: “When I was in prison, being separated from my children and seeing the impact it had on them was the hardest thing I had to deal with.
“While I was in one prison, three women took their own lives. I think we have about 4,000 female prisoners. Probably about 3,500 of them are repeat offenders. Prison doesn’t work.
“If government and the public want to see a reduction in crime they need to rehabilitate women.”
Grosvenor said: “Women have been retrofitted into prison services built for men. As a philanthropist, it’s not enough to give a bit of money here or there. I have to build a system and I’m convinced this is the way we need to do it.”
• This article was amended on 28 June 2023 to clarify that Hope Street was designed and developed by the charity One Small Thing, working closely with Snug Architects and women with lived experience of the justice system.
