Olga Heaven
Fighting for the rights of female prisoners

"It is important that people in Britain are aware that most mules are the victims here. Most women are living in such depraved conditions in Jamaica that they will do anything to feed and take care of their children.
Olga Heaven is passionate about the women she visits in prison. "The British justice system is extremely harsh on women and even more severe with women from Jamaica and in the past Africa.

 

Director of Hibiscus, a welfare project which offers support to female prisoners has been providing this service for the past 11 years and instead of the day to day service beginning to flow, it is being swamped with poor, uneducated Jamaican women being arrested at Heathrow after being caught smuggling drugs in to the UK.

 

Hibiscus, provides and helps maintain family links between foreign women in prison, their children and other relatives. To provide information on the family backgrounds and home circumstances of foreign women to be used by the probation service in pre-sentencing reports for the courts. To provide advocacy services for foreign women involved in the criminal justice system. To enlighten foreign women prisoners, criminal justice administrators and the public at large on the causes of crime and the most humane and effective ways of dealing with them.

 

Hibiscus has been a haven for black women leaving prison and the black families who carry the responsibility of taking care of the children left when the mother ends up doing time. [...]