Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 September 2015 to Question 8612, on female offenders, what steps he is taking to ensure that addressing domestic abuse as a factor associated with offending by women remains a core part of the work of the Advisory Board on Female Offenders.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Terms of Reference for the Advisory Board on Female Offenders and its updated membership are set out below.
Board members have considerable understanding of and expertise in addressing factors underlying women’s offending, including domestic abuse, and will take full account of these as the Board takes forward its programme of work.
Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the extent of provision in the community for female offenders in (a) the North West, (b) Lancashire and (c) Pendle constituency.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Community provision for female offenders is provided by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (part of the National Offender Management Service). CRC contracts are managed by the National Offender Management Service. The National Probation Service works closely with the CRCs to align services for female offenders. Effective delivery of services to female offenders was identified as a priority area when the CRC contracts were awarded, and contract managers have systems in place to monitor and assure compliance with contractual requirements.
Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Advisory Board on Female Offenders in addressing the strategic objectives for female offenders; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Since its inception in 2013, the Advisory Board has been supporting the development of locally driven whole system approaches in Greater Manchester and Wales which provide robust and effective sentencing options in the community. They also contributed to the development of guidance for the new probation providers on responding to the gender-specific needs of female offenders, and considered evidence from a cross-departmental working group on the links between debt and finance issues and female offenders.
I believe the Advisory Board on Female Offenders has an important role to play in our work to drive forward improvements for female offenders. Since May 2015, we have refreshed the membership and Terms of Reference to enable the Board to provide stronger leadership, including holding key Government departments and delivery partners to account.
Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of women in prison have been victims of (a) domestic violence and (b) sexual abuse.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
Of the 2,309 women under sentence in custody at 31 March 2013 who had a formal offender management (OASys) assessment of sufficient quality, 1,401 (61%) were recorded as having volunteered that they had been victims of domestic abuse.
However, there is no equivalent question in OASys for sexual abuse and this information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, on how many occasions bail decisions were challenged using powers granted under section 90 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mike Penning
The information requested is not collected centrally. Applications to the High Court under section 90 are rare but the Crown Prosecution Service is ready to use this right of challenge in suitable cases.
Asked by: Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve the recovery of court fines; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Mike Penning
This Government takes recovery and enforcement of financial impositions very seriously and remains committed to finding new ways to ensure impositions are paid and to trace those who do not pay. This is why there has been a year on year increase in the total amount of financial penalties collected over the last three years. The amount of money collected reached an all time high of £290 million at the end of 2013/14 and collections continue to rise. In 2013/14 the total outstanding balance of financial impositions reduced by £26.7m (5%) in the year.
To build on improvements made in recent years in fine collection HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is embarking on an ambitious programme of reform. When developing and implementing the Criminal Compliance and Enforcement Services Blueprint we identified a number of areas where fundamental change was necessary in order to increase fine collection and better serve the public by delivering value for tax payers’ money.
To meet these challenges HMCTS is looking to work with an external provider for future provision of the service. This will bring the necessary investment and technology HMCTS needs to achieve its aspirations for compliance and enforcement services in the future. It will enable the automation of many of the manual administrative processes and in turn decrease the cost of providing fine enforcement and increase the amount of fines that are paid. The innovation this will bring and the use of automated administrative processes will free up staff time to be more pro-active in pursuing offenders to ensure they comply with their court order.
The competition to identify an external provider commenced in July 2013; the contract is expected to be awarded in early 2015.
HMCTS has also started to pilot the use of data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in fine collection in July 2014, albeit for a number of specifically targeted cases. Early indications are that data from HMRC has enabled HM Courts & Tribunals Service to increase the number of attachment of earnings orders it can make. At present, it is not possible to provide a meaningful estimate of the impact on collection rates; however HMCTS is exploring ways to assess the impact of receiving the data over coming months.