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

Ev 16 Justice Committee: Evidence15 January 2013 Peter Kilgarriff, Jackie Russell, Sharon Spurling and Joy Doalprocess are now under threat. We won’t be able towork with those women at either end next year, whichwill be a shame.Q78 Chair: We as a Committee have previouslyexpressed concern that NOMS tends to be preoccupiedwith the vast majority of prisoners, who are men.Joy Doal: Yes.Q79 Chair: You have all described what is partly astructural problem. Clearly, there is a problem in thatthere is a lot less money around at the moment, and inthat situation it is very difficult to do what you wantto do, but there seems to be evidence of a structuralproblem about where decisions are being taken thataffect women’s lives.Joy Doal: But it’s cheaper—an awful lot cheaper.Q80 Chair: What is cheaper?Joy Doal: For a women’s community project to run acommunity sentence in the community is very muchcheaper than probation delivering that. It is probably40 times cheaper than that woman being in prison, sothis is not really about cost.Q81 Chair: We will come on to some of that. MsSpurling, what is your thought?Sharon Spurling: The Corston report helped us moveaway from looking pretty much only at enforcement.We were able to do much more of the wrap-aroundstuff, looking at people’s accommodation, theirfamilies and their relationships. We were able to buildquite strong partnerships across the public sector,in social services, probation and health, as well asworking with GPs. One of the things we welcomedwas the additional suggestion of working with womenon domestic violence issues and prostitution. I supportwhat Joy says. There is a danger that early interventionand looking at the wider issues that affect women andlead to women offending could be lost, because we aregoing back to being very insular and looking just atoffending, and not the other issues that are going on.Q82 Nick de Bois: I would like to turn tothe Government’s publication “TransformingRehabilitation”. I would rather not go down the routeof talking about the introduction of payment by resultsspecifically at this point, because we are going to lookat it in more detail in a minute. Mr Kilgarriff, perhapsyou would kick off with an answer to this question:what is your overall view of the implications for femaleoffenders of the proposals in the Government’s paper“Transforming Rehabilitation”?Peter Kilgarriff: Without mentioning PBR?Nick de Bois: It is not that you do not have to mentionit, but we are going to dig into that later. We are notavoiding the subject. For example, I am conscious thatthere is really only one paragraph that deals with thesubject, so there is more to come, but it is your view Iam interested in, not mine.Peter Kilgarriff: My view is that now women are notreally considered by policymakers. The differencebetween women’s and men’s offences is notconsidered. The Corston report concentrated as muchupon women at risk as upon women who had offended.That element of women at risk, and all the complexproblems that Joy mentioned, is not touched upon at allby the rehabilitation revolution.Q83 Nick de Bois: In fairness to the report, it talksabout dealing with all offenders. Are you reallysaying there has been no recognition of what wassuggested in the Corston report—that there are uniquecircumstances surrounding female offenders—andthat you feel it should have been addressed in thisdocument, or you would expect to see something later?What is your sense?Peter Kilgarriff: My sense is that there will not beanything coming later. I would like to have seen it inthis document. But there are things in the documentthat might help women offenders.Nick de Bois: Such as?Peter Kilgarriff: The thing about supervising allpeople who leave prison, irrespective of whether theyhave been there for a year or far less time. Most womengo to prison for only a short time, and support after thatmight help, but to my mind that has been underminedby what has happened to the people who should do thesupport.Q84 Nick de Bois: I have got a specific question onthat point for Ms Russell in a second. Ms Spurling, Igo back to my first question about what you think theimplications of the reform are for female offenders. I amsorry if you feel stifled because I am not encouragingyou to go down the route of payment by results, but weare going to go into that later.Sharon Spurling: It is a bit difficult, because the onlypart where women are mentioned is in the section onpayment by results. I support what Peter said, in thatthe really important thing that comes out of this isthe ability for everybody on a short sentence to havesupport when they come out of prison, irrespective ofwhether probation is involved. The situation we arebeginning to work to now, which certainly happenedearlier this year, is that we were asked to work onlywith probation and with women on supervision.Fortunately, a really supportive probation managerargued that we should be able to work more widely,so that we could take people from LMAPS— LocalMulti Agency Problem Solving —from which wehad been almost excluded. That is really important,because meeting those women at the gate, being ableto sort out their accommodation, which is difficult inNorthumberland, being able get them into services andstart working with them immediately, is something thatis very transforming from the report.Q85 Nick de Bois: Ms Russell, in your writtenevidence I was quite taken by the fact you suggestedthat, since May 2012, the Government had notfacilitated involvement of the third sector in thepreparation of their rather long-awaited documenton strategic priorities for women offenders. That isdefinitely the case, is it?Jackie Russell: That is the case.Q86 Nick de Bois: There has been no engagementwhatsoever with the third sector.