Recall of Women to Prisons

Debate between Ellie Reeves and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this incredibly important debate. As a member of the Select Committee on Justice, I have visited a number of prisons, including Downview women’s prison. On every visit to a prison, I hear stories about punitive, arbitrary and often completely avoidable recalls to prison.

Recall appears to operate more harshly in relation to prisoners serving indeterminate sentences for public protection. Although IPP prisoners account for a small proportion of the female prison population, it is important to mention them in this debate. I acknowledge that there are prisoners who pose a genuine risk to society, but the opinion is widely held that IPP sentences are not the way to deal with them. Such sentences have now been abolished and the Parole Board has a priority target of reducing the IPP prison population significantly. Of the 440 women recalled to prison in the three months between July and September last year, four were IPP prisoners. Although there are substantially fewer women on IPP tariffs compared with men—I think there are 46 women on IPP tariffs—between 2010 and 2017, 40 women were recalled due to breach of their licence conditions.

At present, an IPP prisoner’s licence can be terminated only after the they have completed 10 years in the community following their release—an extremely lengthy period. I have significant concerns that the terms by which the licence and recall system operates are set at too low a threshold, with the result that prisoners flip between detention, parole boards and release on licence once more. I urge the Minister to look at the issue of removing the last of the IPP prisoners in the prison estate with some urgency.

In the year ending September 2018, there were 1,846 recalls of women to custody while on licence—a significant number, considering that the current female prison population stands at 3,809. The first set of data since the implementation of the Offender Rehabilitation Act shows that more than three times as many women were recalled to prison since the ORA changes.

As has been said extensively in this debate and others, short sentences have huge implications for women and their families. A recent report by the Prison Reform Trust show that 17,000 children in England and Wales are affected by maternal imprisonment. Those 17,000 children might have to be cared for by somebody else, be rehomed, leave school or drop out of education altogether. Sometimes recall is necessary, but a decent justice system is also a humane one. In the current system, licence conditions are often seen as a tick-box exercise, rather than a more holistic approach being taken. It is clear that it is not working. Those 17,000 children did not commit crimes, but recall can have a catastrophic impact on them.

We must not forget that, although women can be perpetrators of crime, more often than not they are victims of crime. The Prison Reform Trust data shows that, shockingly, nearly 60% of women prisoners have previously experienced domestic abuse. If we are to solve the issue of female prisoners, this debate must go well beyond recall and prisons, and delve into the wider issue of women in society. As the Prison Reform Trust succinctly states:

“women can become trapped in a vicious cycle of victimisation and criminal activity. Their situation is often worsened by poverty, substance dependency or poor mental health.”

Given that women are often the principal carers for children, it is obvious that the impact of recall and imprisonment is far-reaching.

Some 84% of sentenced women entering prison committed a non-violent offence. When I spoke to the women in Downview prison, I was struck by the fact that none of them was the ringleader in the crimes they had committed. All the women I spoke to were ancillary to the crimes and all the ringleaders were men, so the situation needs looking at holistically. At present, women are more likely than men to be given a prison sentence for a first offence, with one in four women sentenced to less than one month and 55% to less than three months. Women are also more likely to complete their community order or licence period supervision successfully, so there is a huge question about whether the vast majority of women prisoners ought to be in prison in the first place.

The 2007 Corston report called for a distinct, radically different, visibly led, strategic, proportionate, holistic and women-centred approach. Much of the report focused on community support, sentencing reform and alternatives to custody. I fear that, 12 years on, progress on women prisoners has fallen far short of Baroness Corston’s original recommendations. The Secretary of State for Justice has signalled an intention to move away from the model of short sentences, but in regard to women and short sentences, Baroness Corston remarked that short sentences

“do not successfully deflect from further offending and for many women make their lives and those of their children worse.”

Why has it taken 12 years to reconsider short sentences when their effects have been known for so long?

The Select Committee on Justice found, in our recent work on transforming rehabilitation and introducing a presumption against short sentences, which we recommended, that volatile short stays in prison can exacerbate the issues in play, rather than reduce reoffending. It has been shown that offenders serving a community sentence typically have a reoffending rate 7% lower than that for similar people serving prison sentences of less than a year, so surely that is where the emphasis should be—on delivering rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.

Women are only a small percentage of the overall prison population. Their distinct issues often go unnoticed or are not focused on in the context of the significantly greater number of men in the prison estate. I therefore welcome the message from the Ministry of Justice in relation to short custodial sentences, but I want to see legislation on that issue and more robust community sentencing, so that those who are passing sentences have confidence that no non-custodial sentence—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I have been generous with the hon. Lady, but she is a minute over her time and I have to call the first Front-Bench speaker: Stuart C. McDonald for the SNP.