Women: Custodial Sentences

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, just said about the need for small prisons and prisons near to women’s homes. That is very important.

This has been an excellent debate. I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Healy. Like others, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Corston—who is unfortunately unable to be here this afternoon although she very much wanted to be. Her invaluable report in 2007 focused on,

“the need for a distinct, radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach”.

Seven years on, there is still much more to be done to prevent the lives of women and their families being torn apart by the lack of action to address issues connected with women’s offending before imprisonment becomes a serious option. The decline in the number of women prisoners is welcome but there are still far too many women in prison. Why are so many women prisoners on remand? As my noble friend said, much more needs to be done with the magistrates and judiciary.

As a result of the Corston report, much was done with the support of the last Labour Government. There was funding to start building a network of women’s centres, mandatory strip-searching in prisons was ended and governance structures, including a cross-departmental women’s team, were established. I recognise what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. When women first enter a prison, they are now treated with dignity and are able to make contact with their children to ensure they are being properly cared for.

Sadly, this Government have not maintained the momentum. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, said, where is the sustained government leadership on this issue? As the Justice Select Committee report on the Corston agenda said:

“In the first two years of the Coalition Government there was a hiatus in efforts to make headway”.

The reforms put in place were, it said, clearly designed with men in mind. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong said, too often prisons treat women as if they were men. Instead of a proper women’s strategy, we have a government agenda which the committee judged to have been,

“produced in haste with insufficient thought”,

and that fails to make progress or commit to improve the rehabilitative services and outcomes for women offenders.

Why have the Government proposed the closure of the open prisons in Askham Grange and East Sutton Park despite both having a proven track record of encouraging rehabilitation and enabling mums to remain with their children? The Government appear to have abandoned the women at risk agenda. Not enough is being done in relation to evidence-based rehabilitation and prevention, without which women suffer. The decline in the number of women given custodial sentences is not sustainable.

As has been said, prisons are rarely a necessary, appropriate or proportionate response to women who get caught up in the criminal justice system. Of course, there will be cases where women need to go to prison but we must ensure that these environments support and promote an easier transition back into society. Many programmes up and down the country have been mentioned this afternoon. I cite the excellent example of the social enterprise in Eastwood Park prison, where the women make quality and beautifully presented soap. I am proud to be associated with that programme. The women gain skills, dignity and confidence. They leave prison with a little more money in those first days of freedom when they are most vulnerable.

As noble Lords said, good practice should be common practice. Reducing offending is a vital goal but so, too, is preventing women from falling into the criminal justice system in the first place. As the Prison Reform Trust said, most solutions to women’s offending lie outside the prison walls. This is where women’s centres play such a crucial role. They provide support and care for those who have suffered domestic abuse or have mental health problems. Appallingly, this is likely to be the majority of the female prison population. More than half of the women currently in prison have reported suffering from domestic abuse, and women in custody are five times more likely to have a mental health problem than women in the general population.

The centres also offer educational and skills support to the 40% of women offenders who left school before they were 16 and the 10% who left before they were 13 years old. When 58% of the women identified unemployment and lack of skills as contributing to their offending, it is crucial that these resources are available to women across the country. What safeguards are the Government putting in place to ensure that the new providers will continue to fund these vital centres?

I hope that this afternoon the Government will demonstrate that they really are taking seriously a reduction in the number of women being given custodial sentences. The women, their children and our society deserve no less. This afternoon, we have heard many fine examples of where the Government and we as a society, and our communities, can do better. We must do better for the benefit of these women and society.