Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders' Family and other Relationships to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime Review

(asked on 14th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress has been made on implementing the recommendations of the 2019 Farmer Review For Women.


Answered by
Alex Chalk Portrait
Alex Chalk
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
This question was answered on 19th April 2021

The Government has made good progress in implementing the recommendations of the Farmer Review for Women, since its publication in June 2019. Ten recommendations have already been implemented and a further eight are expected to be completed this year. Achievements so far include increased access to telephone contact in court custody suites, allowances for the increased use of Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL), amending the eligibility for Child Resettlement Leave to include primary carers as well as sole carers, and the rollout of video calling across the Women’s Estate.

As set out in the Female Offender Strategy, the Government is working to ensure women’s personal circumstances are identified and shared by all agencies in the criminal justice system, in order to inform decisions and support. Lord Farmer’s recommendation on the Personal Circumstances File forms part of this work.

We are also committed to increasing the delivery of quality and timely pre-sentence reports (PSRs) and understand the particular importance of PSRs for women. HM Prison and Probation Service has developed a Pre-Sentence Report interview checklist which focuses on the specific needs of female offenders. Following a series of briefing events, this was rolled out nationally in August 2019 and is available to all practitioners.

Additionally, in the Sentencing White Paper we committed to ensuring that probation staff are supported to deliver a high standard of reports and to significantly increase the proportion of court disposals which benefit from a PSR. This pilot has now launched, and will be in all 15 pilot magistrate courts across 10 probation regions in England and Wales by mid-May. One element of this pilot looks specifically at female offenders, given this cohort often have particularly complex needs. We will use the findings from this pilot to further inform how we take forward Lord Farmer’s recommendation.

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