Women offenders: after the Corston Report - United Kingdom ...

Women offenders: after the Corston Report 7The Government’s response7. The then Government’s response to the Corston Report, which accepted 41 of the 43recommendations and set out how each of these would be addressed, was published ninemonths later. At the same time the Government announced that Maria Eagle MP wouldbecome Ministerial Champion for Women and Criminal Justice and a cross-departmentalWomen’s Policy Unit was created within the Home Office to drive the reforms. Much ofthe evidence we received claimed that the current Government had accorded less priorityto fulfilling the Corston agenda, having dismantled this governance infrastructure. In thisReport we inevitably address this question, but we do so in the constructive spirit ofwishing to reinvigorate improvements in the criminal justice system for women. We alsoexamine a number of relevant developments which have occurred since we announced ourinquiry, including the Government’s appointment of a Ministerial champion;announcement of a review of the female custodial estate; publication of its strategicpriorities for women offenders; and embarkation upon an extensive overhaul of theprovision of offender management and rehabilitative services.Trends in women’s offending and sentencing8. The Government is required to publish data to determine whether there is anydiscrimination in how the criminal justice system treats people based on their gender. 4 TheMinistry of Justice produces annual statistics on women in the criminal justice system, themost recent of which relate to 2011. 5 Key findings include: women have accounted for around 15% of offenders under supervision in thecommunity as a result of community and suspended sentence orders, and five per centof the total prison population, in each of the last five years. women tend to be subject to shorter community orders than men: of the 12,925 womensupervised under a community order that year, 14% were supervised for less than oneyear compared to 7% of men. women are less likely to be sentenced to custody than men: 3% of females weresentenced to immediate custody, compared to 10% of males. women also tend to serve shorter custodial sentences than men: a greater proportion ofwomen in prison under immediate custodial sentence were serving sentences of twelvemonths or less than men (21% and 10%, respectively), and similarly for sentences of sixmonths or less (15% and 7% respectively).69. The fact that short sentences account for a greater proportion of women being in prisonis thought likely to be attributable to a range of factors including differences in the offencetypes committed by men and women, with women tending to have committed offences of4 Under section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 19915 Ministry of Justice, Women and the criminal justice system, November 20126 The average custodial sentence length given to women in magistrates’ courts was 2.3 months, compared to 2.6months for men, and for such sentences given in Crown Court, the average was 19.9 months, compared to 25.1months for men. The only crime for which women tend to receive longer custodial sentences than men is criminaldamage.