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Janey

@janey.starling

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I ❤️ women & I hate prisons.
🔥 Award-winning feminist campaigner & punk
💫Co-director @levelup_uk 🥊 Singer @yakkieband
📕 Pre-order PUNISHING WOMEN ⬇️

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What is the real reason modern prisons are overcrowded? We spoke to @janey.starling on our latest episode to find out #ukpolitics #politics #politicsnews #prison #fyp by @janey.starling

We spoke to @janey.starling about how Tony Blair created the modern authoritarianism that we live in the UK today. Her new book PUNISHING WOMEN: THE CASE AGAINST PRISONS will be out February 2027 #podcast #fyp #tonyblair #ukpolitics #labour by @janey.starling

Tony Blair tried to change the laws to be able to arrest you for 3 months without charge. We spoke with @janey.starling about his toxic legacy in our latest episode, available on all streaming platforms now

#tonyblair #arrest #terrorism #counterterrorism #podcast by @janey.starling

Did Tony Blair create the modern British prisons crisis? We spoke with @janey.starling who discussed the toxic New Labour legacy of sentence inflation #podcast #tonyblair #prison #overcrowded by @janey.starling

Life is scary enough so I decided to be Jessica Rabbit 🥰💄💋 ✨ by @janey.starling

Next up on Tangible Vibe Shift we have @janey.starling - author, campaigner and singer, to discuss her personal nemesis, Tony Blair, and how everything bad we experience in today’s politics and social conditions are downstream from his legacy, but especially with regard to the prison system. Available now on all platforms, links in bio! 👻

#tonyblair #prison #podcast #newlabour by @janey.starling

🚨BIG NEWS: I am very proud to announce that my first book, PUNISHING WOMEN: The Case Against Prison will be published by @grantabooks in February 2027.

For the last six years, I have tirelessly campaigned to end the imprisonment of pregnant women. In this time, I have witnessed the horrors that prison inflicts not just on pregnant women, but all women. There is only so far you can get with the argument that mothers shouldn’t be incarcerated before you are forced to reckon with incarceration in its entirety – and that is what led me to write this book.

This book will challenge you on everything you think you know about prisons, who is inside them and why. The majority of women in prison are survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, many are struggling with addiction as a means of coping with their trauma. Yet this book isn’t a plea for deservingness or innocence. It reckons with women’s complexity, exploring the greyspace between victimhood and harmdoing, while questioning whether carceral punishment is helpful or necessary. It also looks at the rapidly-expanding powers of the state, and the increasing numbers of people sent to prison for protest-related offences.

The women’s stories in the book tell a much bigger story about England as a society. One where the welfare state has morphed into a carceral state – where funding for domestic abuse and addiction support has been slashed, yet we continue to pump billions of public funds into prisons against all evidence that this does anything to keep society truly safe.

PUNISHING WOMEN will be published on the 20th anniversary of the infamous Corston report, which in 2007 advocated for ‘radical change’ in women’s prisons. Since then, very little has changed. I interrogate the origins of our decades-long ‘tough on crime’ doomloop (cough, Tony Blair) and provide solutions for how we get out of the current mess we’re in.

I can’t wait for you to read it! Pre-orders count for a lot in publishing, and I’d be hugely grateful for your support. You can pre-order via my bio! ❤️

Thank you @monicamacswan my agent and dream editor @dbirdan for believing in this book & making it a reality! 📸 @lydialange by @janey.starling

🥰❤️🥰 it was the dance floor that brought me & @jamiewilkes88 together 18 years ago and the dance floor has been the backbone of our friendship ever since 🥰❤️ May we still be dancing together in another 18 years. Joy on joy on joy ❤️ by @janey.starling

🌻35🌻 My life is so full of love and laughter ❤️‍🔥 What a blessing it is to grow older. My friends are my world!
📸 @tarantinagram 💞 by @janey.starling

❤️‍🔥 Trans pride ❤️‍🔥 Trans rights are human rights and bodily autonomy is the cornerstone of feminist liberation. I’ve spent over a decade of my life fighting against gendered violence & have witnessed the inordinate damage that a small, vociferous and litigious group of bullies have caused not just to trans people’s lives but the feminist movement more broadly. The relational ruptures & the chilling effect that ‘gender critical’ feminists have created within women’s groups, organisations, campaigns and networks has been so effective that it sometimes feels like an elaborate psy-op designed to break our collective power. Today was a reminder that there truly are SO many more of us than that miserable lot. by @janey.starling

Performing Fight For Our Lives with @petrol_girls last week was genuinely life affirming. Women NEED spaces to put our rage. To scream and cry together, and to release all that we hold in our bodies. Ever since Eden died (which I genuinely believe was a result of the unbearable grief of Beth being murdered) I’ve found it really hard to do the femicide work that I used to, training newsrooms on @levelup_uk’s media guidelines. The collateral damage of men’s violence seems to ripple out indefinitely and sometimes that makes me feel so overwhelmed. But punk shows are always the place I can unapologetically put all of my unfiltered fury and grief, and that gives others permission to do the same. We had so many women coming up to thank us after the show, and I have never taken it for granted how rare and precious these spaces are in a society that forces us to either be silent or be “constructive” with our anger. All to say, I love @ren_behaving_badly, and am so honoured she invited me to put guest vocals on this track five years ago. I can’t believe it’s been a decade of music, mischief & feminist sisterhood together — plotting offstage far more than we are performing on it ❤️‍🔥 Here’s to decades more.

If you’ve got rage to release, come to @yakkieband’s next London show on 27 August with @fightmilkisaband at @signaturebrewe8 ❤️‍🔥 I’m excited for it already.

(📸 the mighty @del_photos) by @janey.starling

Took mama out to the dyke pride party for her birthday 💖✨ @xzandj asked if she had any song requests & she said Pump Up The Jam. What a joy to see her so carefree 💕💕💕 by @janey.starling