Criminal Justice System: Women

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and I echo many of her comments.

I start by adding my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this debate and for all the tremendously hard work he has done. I agree with the comments of many noble Lords, including those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester that families lie at the root of so much of our behaviour. It seems there is, very often, a repeating cycle of abuse, addiction and crime. According to the Centre for Social Justice, over half of all female prisoners report having experienced some form of emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child. Nearly half have attempted suicide at some time in their lives, and half have been identified as suffering from both anxiety and depression. The CSJ also found that 39% of women arrive in prison with a drug problem and a large number are there because of acquisitive crime to fund their own or someone else’s addiction. Two-thirds of female offenders say that they commit offences to get money to buy drugs and almost half say it is to fund someone else’s drug use.

We know that imprisoning addicts does not work, and that the money would be better spent rehabilitating them in the community. The question is: are we doing enough? I welcome the female offender strategy, focusing as it does on earlier interventions in the community, reducing the number of short sentences and having better community rehabilitation services. But there is a way to go: we have roughly twice the number of women in prison today as 20 years ago, although the causes of offending remain essentially the same.

There are threads that some organisations still think need picking up and weaving into the national strategy for women in the criminal justice system. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, says that,

“many women have experienced domestic abuse and this and other forms of toxic relationships may have been a contributor to or prime factor in their offending behaviour”.

Indeed, in Transforming Rehabilitation the MoJ found that 57% of women offenders were victims of domestic violence. To quote Dame Vera Baird:

“Domestic abuse can leave long-term and widespread effects on some women who may have endured years of being repeatedly assaulted, threatened, ridiculed, starved of money and isolated from their friends—all done by someone they thought loved them ... Putting them in prison seems like a double failure since we didn’t tackle the abuse and blame them for its consequences”.

The sad case of Sally Challen illustrates this.

We know that almost 60% of women in community supervision or custody who have had an assessment have experienced domestic abuse. There’s the rub: how many women get that assessment? The Prison Reform Trust recommends routine inquiry into women’s histories of domestic abuse at each stage of the criminal justice process to ensure informed decision-making. As Donna Covey of Against Violence & Abuse said:

“For far too many survivors of domestic abuse, their journey ends in a prison cell rather than a refuge bedroom”.


The Prison Reform Trust is lobbying for a new statutory defence for those whose offending is driven by their experience of domestic abuse. I certainly support that and wish the trust well in it.

We know that when a women is incarcerated she is not the only one who suffers. We do not know how many children have mothers in the criminal justice system; 17,000 is the estimate but there is underreporting because mothers fear that their children will be taken from them. The suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, of a personal circumstances file, which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, seems an eminently sensible suggestion. Could the Minister comment on whether the Government are considering this?

In its 2018 report the Centre for Social Justice found that nearly three in five incarcerated women reported having dependent children living with them before custody. Following imprisonment, only one in four—compared with 94% of men—reported that their children were now living with a partner. What happens to those children is hugely important, not just for the children—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, spoke movingly about the effect on them—but for the women themselves.

When the Government launched their female offender strategy, they announced a new programme of work to support it. They set out eight commitments, two of which we know have come to pass, including the new policy framework and the excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, which we have been discussing today. What are the other six? They include £5 million for community support and a pilot for women’s residential centres in at least five areas of England, which was spoken about by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. I hope the Minister has come to this debate armed with some progress on these. Can he tell us how they are going?

In the female offender strategy the Government say that custodial sentences of less than 12 months are less effective in reducing reoffending than community sentences. So why are we still doing this? The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, gave good examples from his practical experience as a magistrate of why the 12-month sentence should be abolished altogether. Does the Minister have any evidence of that trend being reversed? Can he say how that is going?

Lastly, are the Government going to review the licence rules for prisoners serving less than 12 months, introduced under the Offender Rehabilitation Act? What use can it serve when, for example, an offender is sentenced to two months, serves one and then has to spend 11 under licence? Is the probation service not stretched enough? This has weighed particularly heavily on women prisoners, who typically serve shorter sentences. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, also spoke about recall and questioned its value. The Prison Reform Trust is calling for the supervision of those given a prison sentence of less than 12 months to be made voluntary. When are the Government intending to look at recall again?

Many other contributors spoke on issues that I have not raised in my remarks today. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, who talked about BAME women and the importance of their sensitive treatment in the courts. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, spoke about Muslim women and the honour culture and asked where the £50 million from not building women’s prisons has gone to. Could we have it back, please? That question is from me, not necessarily from her.

Several noble Lords talked about accommodation, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Redfern and Lady Byford. Just because I have not mentioned this in my remarks does not mean I do not think it is vital. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked about Holloway prison and his experiences there. I had a lot of experiences there too, 20 years or so before he was there, and I am sad to know that it does not seem to have particularly changed. I join him in calling for a women’s justice board. Surely we can do better. I look forward to the Minister’s response.