Women: Deaths in Custody

Lord Sheldon Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Sheldon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to reduce the number of deaths of women in custody.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, any death in prison custody is tragic. The number and rate of self-inflicted deaths of women in custody has declined from a peak of 14 in 2003 to three in 2009. This year there has been one self-inflicted death in custody. We will continue to work hard to reduce this further by focusing on care planning for each individual woman in custody and by seeking to ensure that all agencies concerned work effectively together.

[Lord Sheldon]

I thank the noble Baroness for that reply, because it is rather useful. But is it not unacceptable that the female prison population has increased by 30 per cent over the past decade? In January 2009, there were 4,199 women in custody, one-third of whom had no previous convictions at all. According to the Corston review, there should be custody for women only for serious and violent crimes and for threats to the public. In the 10 years to December 2009, there were 69 self-inflicted deaths of women in prison. Women are often imprisoned for minor offences and the impact is on their children. What action are the Government taking to change this?

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question and for ensuring that we focus on this important issue. He is quite right: if you look at the sentencing pattern for women compared with that for men, you will find that we are a law-abiding sex, it seems. Although only 5 per cent of prisoners are women, they are in prison for lesser offences than are men. That, surely, is not how it should be. In many cases, those women are extremely vulnerable; there is a high incidence of mental illness, drug abuse, other substance abuse and so on. The noble Lord is also right that they usually have dependent children. The previous Government took the Corston report forward and sought to address this. We will be doing as much as we can to take that further forward. I point the noble Lord in the direction of the sentencing review that is shortly to come out.