Chris Tchaikovsky

Chris Ryder-Tchaikovsky (28 May 1944 – 19 May 2002) was a British social activist. After serving a custodial prison sentence at HM Prison Holloway during the 1970s, she became an activist for the reform of the criminal justice system for women, and in 1984 co-founded Women in Prison, a charity supporting incarcerated women.

Biography

Early life and criminality Tchaikovsky was born into a middle-class family in Cornwall and was one of six children. She struggled in school, and moved to Plymouth and later to London during the 1960s. While in London, Tchaikovsky became the leader of a criminal gang known as the Happy Family who committed crimes including cashing cheques and traveller's cheques with forged identification. She was eventually caught and charged with fraud, and on 22 October 1973 was sentenced to serve 15 months' imprisonment at HM Prison Holloway. During Tchaikovsky's time in prison, a fellow inmate, Patricia Holloway, died after setting fire to her cell, which was attributed to neglect, isolation and mental strain experienced by women in prison. Tchaikovsky subsequently described prison as a "brutalising, disabling and deforming experience". The charity aimed to support women presently or previously imprisoned, and has expanded to support women involved in the criminal justice system more generally.; Tchaikovsky served as WIP's director. WIP supported women leaving prison with access to employment and accommodation. Tchaikovsky called for more targeted support for female offenders, including widespread access to rehabilitation programmes for substance users, and mental health support for women in mental health institutions; she was a key figure in the establishment of Women in Special Hospitals (WISH), addressing the mistreatment of women in prison with mental health conditions.

Tchaikovsky believed that punishing the "most hurt" in society in order to "teach them how to live" was "futile". Tchaikovsky was a driving force behind the establishment of the Holloway Remand Scheme, which replaced long custodial sentences with community-based reparation work alongside intensive support. In 1997, she was named a Cropwood fellow and spent a year at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology, producing a study of 100 female prisoners, almost half of whom had gone through the Holloway Remand Scheme. The project was published in 2000 as One Hundred Women and notably highlighted the high number of imprisoned women who had experienced abuse as children. Tchaikovsky worked with Inquest to investigate the rise in deaths of women in prison. She served as a consultant for the ITV series Bad Girls, set in a women's prison.