Ev 18 Justice Committee: Evidence15 January 2013 Peter Kilgarriff, Jackie Russell, Sharon Spurling and Joy Doal63% for those coming out <strong>after</strong> a short prison sentenceat, say, Foston Hall. It does not make any sense. If youare talking about reducing reoffending, <strong>the</strong> servicesthat we provide do make sense. But yes, we haven’t gotnational coverage. We can’t even deal with <strong>the</strong> wholeof Birmingham. In some areas <strong>the</strong>re is no provision forthose women, but <strong>the</strong>re could be—at a hugely reducedcost.Going back to your original question, <strong>the</strong>re areo<strong>the</strong>r things. One of <strong>the</strong> dangers with “TransformingRehabilitation” is that all <strong>the</strong> people below tier 3<strong>offenders</strong> are to be managed by a private company,because <strong>the</strong>y are all deemed to be low-risk. But withwomen, you also have to understand that, although <strong>the</strong>yare low-risk in terms of harm to o<strong>the</strong>rs, <strong>the</strong>y are veryhigh-risk in terms of need, and of risk to <strong>the</strong>mselvesand <strong>the</strong>ir children, because <strong>the</strong>ir lives are often chaotic.They will be classed as a low tier of risk of harm to<strong>the</strong> public, so under <strong>the</strong>se proposals nearly all <strong>the</strong>sewomen will be managed outside. You can pretty muchstick all <strong>the</strong> women in that box, because <strong>the</strong>y will allbe in tier 3.Q92 Jeremy Corbyn: I am very interested in <strong>the</strong>points you are making. What would be <strong>the</strong> equivalentcommunity sentence to a very short prison sentence,such as five or 10 days?Joy Doal: We do specified activity requirements,which are anything up to 60 days. That could be 60days for up to 12 months.Q93 Jeremy Corbyn: Sixty full days.Joy Doal: Yes. Someone may attend our centre 60times—60 days—over 12 months, but it could be 30days or 20 days.Q94 Jeremy Corbyn: What would she do on thosedays?Joy Doal: She would access all sorts of support, andshe would also access courses—offending behaviourcourses, anger management courses, DV coursesand drug awareness courses. There would be a fulltimetable.Q95 Jeremy Corbyn: Who monitors this?Joy Doal: Probation. We work in conjunction withprobation. We have co‐located offender managersin <strong>the</strong> centre who manage <strong>the</strong> cases, but our supportworkers do <strong>the</strong> actual front-line support with thatwoman. She will have a worker who will deal withall her issues and help her with housing, issues with<strong>the</strong> children, social services and parenting courses.We have a crèche on site. It is holistic: everything is<strong>the</strong>re for her in one place. She is receiving <strong>the</strong> support,but she is also undergoing punishment in terms of herliberty. She has to attend, because obviously that ispart of <strong>the</strong> court order; o<strong>the</strong>rwise, you have also gotcommunity payback by unpaid work. She can do hoursin <strong>the</strong> community.Chair: Perhaps we could stop <strong>the</strong>re, because we aregoing to come back to <strong>the</strong> nature of what you are ableto do with your organisations.Q96 Mr Llwyd: Arising from that, 60 days is quiteintensive and obviously worth while, but, bearing inmind that a lot of <strong>the</strong>se women have chaotic lives, howmany fall off and do not complete?Joy Doal: Not that many.Q97 Mr Llwyd: Roughly how many?Joy Doal: We have a really good success rate. I cannotgive you <strong>the</strong> exact figures, but very few orders arebreached. If <strong>the</strong>y are breached, usually it is at <strong>the</strong>very initial stages, when someone has not even comethrough <strong>the</strong> door.Jackie Russell: I don’t think that 60 days would be<strong>the</strong> order for somebody as an alternative to five-daycustody. That lower tier would have less contact timein a sense, although it could be, as Joy said—Q98 Jeremy Corbyn: What is <strong>the</strong> equivalent? Ifsomebody would have been given, for example, a 10-day prison sentence, how much community work orcommunity attendance would <strong>the</strong>y get instead?Joy Doal: It varies.Q99 Jeremy Corbyn: It is not that scientific.Joy Doal: No.Q100 Chair: It is not that consistent.Sharon Spurling: What also varies is that not allareas have access to specified activity requirements.In <strong>the</strong> Northumbria Probation Trust that is particularlyaround ETE, not anything specific to women. Thatarea does not do conditional cautioning, so <strong>the</strong>re arechanges across <strong>the</strong> patch as to what you can access forwomen. If that was a bit more joined up, we would beable to give you lots more data, because we would allbe working in <strong>the</strong> same kind of regime of monitoringand collection.Q101 Andy McDonald: Putting to one side <strong>the</strong>efficacy and appropriateness of non‐custodial sentencesand focusing on those occasions when custodialsentences are necessary, Her Majesty’s chief inspectorof prisons suggests that women do best in smaller open,or semi-open, establishments. Given that, do you share<strong>the</strong> disappointment expressed by Baroness <strong>Corston</strong> tous in December at <strong>the</strong> Government’s decision not toaccept her recommendation to establish small custodialunits for women?Jackie Russell: Yes, absolutely.Peter Kilgarriff: Very much.Jackie Russell: We have heard that small custodialunits would be expensive, but what we have not seenis a fully costed proposal of what that would looklike. You also have to remember that that proposalwas based alongside o<strong>the</strong>r proposals that would havereduced <strong>the</strong> prison population. Whereas <strong>the</strong>re are4,000-plus women in prison today, <strong>the</strong> small custodialmodel was about asking questions such as: how manyof those women should not be <strong>the</strong>re because <strong>the</strong>yare <strong>the</strong>re for breach of an order that would not haveresulted in prison anyway? How many of those womenare <strong>the</strong>re on remand? How many of those women are<strong>the</strong>re for under three months, or under six months?Once you start to deal with those women appropriately,your prison population drops, which gives you aproper model, and it is that model that should havebeen costed for small custodial units. We have not seen
Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 1915 January 2013 Peter Kilgarriff, Jackie Russell, Sharon Spurling and Joy Doalthat; we have just been told that it is too expensive andit will not happen. We are very disappointed that thatproposal has not been looked at seriously.Q102 Andy McDonald: Have <strong>the</strong>re been anyimprovements in <strong>the</strong> regime? Have you been able toidentify any?Peter Kilgarriff: It is difficult to see <strong>the</strong>m. Somewomen’s prisons have been closed since <strong>the</strong> publicationof <strong>the</strong> report. That has had <strong>the</strong> effect of sending womento prison fur<strong>the</strong>r away from <strong>the</strong>ir homes and causingan increase in <strong>the</strong> numbers in some women’s prisons.That goes against what <strong>the</strong> chief inspector was sayingand what we believe.Q103 Andy McDonald: Presumably, if we are on atrajectory of trying to reduce <strong>the</strong> prison population and<strong>the</strong> number of sentences being smaller, isn’t that goingto result in women who are in custody being muchfur<strong>the</strong>r away from home in any event?Joy Doal: Not if <strong>the</strong>re were local small units.Peter Kilgarriff: The norm that Baroness <strong>Corston</strong>argued for, and that we would like to see, is that nonviolentfemale <strong>offenders</strong> are not sent to prison butare dealt with in <strong>the</strong> community. There seems to beevidence that not only is that cost-effective but it ismore effective in terms of reducing reoffending, andin terms of <strong>the</strong> well-being of <strong>the</strong> women. There isevidence that women who have offended who workwith women who have not offended—in o<strong>the</strong>r words,at a generic women’s centre, not a women’s centrethat is seen primarily as a women <strong>offenders</strong> centre—develop much better.Q104 Andy McDonald: Are you really saying that, ifwe are serious about trying to improve <strong>the</strong> position onreoffending, we should stop doing what doesn’t workand spread out what does work?Jackie Russell: Yes.Peter Kilgarriff: Yes, absolutely.Joy Doal: That would make sense.Q105 Mr Llwyd: Ms Doal and Ms Spurling, wouldyou describe your particular projects, with a bit about<strong>the</strong> history, <strong>the</strong> actual work and <strong>the</strong> funding?Sharon Spurling: Support for <strong>Women</strong> AroundNorthumberland got toge<strong>the</strong>r to bid in 2009 when <strong>the</strong>second phase of <strong>the</strong> money from <strong>the</strong> <strong>Corston</strong> coalitioncame about. What made us a little different was <strong>the</strong>area we worked in. The county of Northumberland—I’ve got to get this right, haven’t I?—is 5000 squarekilometres with a population of 310,000 and bigareas of rural living and rural isolation, with somepockets of quite severe deprivation. We saw that <strong>the</strong>recommendations for a women’s centre would notwork in Northumberland, so we developed a virtualwomen’s centre, if you like. At that time we calledit <strong>the</strong> virtual one‐stop shop. Because of <strong>the</strong> diversityof Northumberland and <strong>the</strong> women and communitieswithin it, we wanted to develop a partnership ra<strong>the</strong>r thanhave just one organisation. The organisation I work for,Escape Family Support, works with drug and alcoholusers on addiction, and <strong>the</strong>ir families and carers, whichis great for a cohort of women but not for everybody.We also got toge<strong>the</strong>r with <strong>the</strong> <strong>Women</strong>’s Health AdviceCentre based in south-east Northumberland, because<strong>the</strong>y had a more generic and holistic approach aroundwomen’s health and well-being; Fourth Action, which isa social enterprise that works in north Northumberlandmentoring women into employment and training;and finally Relate. When we first came up with thatidea it sounded a bit odd; everybody thinks aboutrelationships and repair. Relate was about that, but italso had expertise in counselling—generic counsellingand sexual <strong>the</strong>rapy—so we brought those partnerstoge<strong>the</strong>r and put our bid in for Northumberland.We hit <strong>the</strong> ground running in about February 2010. Werealised at that point that <strong>the</strong> monitoring and evaluationwas not great for all <strong>the</strong> projects. We were feedinginto <strong>the</strong> centre but not really getting much back. Inour first year we decided to bring in an independentevaluator, Dr Chris Hartworth of Barefoot Researchand Evaluation. He was able to say that at <strong>the</strong> end of<strong>the</strong> first year we had a 70% reduction in reoffendingfor <strong>the</strong> women we worked with. We had about 122referrals over <strong>the</strong> year. Those were women who hadoffended or who were at risk of offending, and alsowomen who had offended again and again. We built<strong>the</strong> project from <strong>the</strong>re.We have some particular issues in Northumberland. Wehave a real problem around supportive accommodationfor women, which is almost non-existent. <strong>Women</strong>have real issues to do with travelling around to accessservices. Our premise was always to take <strong>the</strong> serviceto <strong>the</strong> women. That would mean that, if we had togo to Kielder Forest to see a woman, that is what wewould do; if it was in Berwick or Amble, our workerswould go out and see <strong>the</strong> woman in <strong>the</strong> community.That really helps to engage women back in <strong>the</strong>ir localcommunities as well, so <strong>the</strong>y become a bit more valuedin <strong>the</strong> community. People see that <strong>the</strong>y are tacklingsome difficult issues and coming out <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r side.I want to describe for Members <strong>the</strong> distances aroundNorthumberland. If we had a women’s centre in justone place—in, say, Blyth, which is in south-eastNorthumberland—and we had to bring a woman fromBerwick in to <strong>the</strong> service, it would be <strong>the</strong> equivalentof saying to a woman sitting here, “You need to go toBrighton to get that service.” That is never going tohappen; those women are never going to do that. Inrural communities in particular, it is so important that<strong>the</strong> services are delivered in those local communities—and by people from those communities as well. Oneof <strong>the</strong> ways we get around <strong>the</strong> expense of travel isto employ people from those local communities orwe develop mentors or volunteers who live in thosecommunities.Chair: It is music to my ears to hear <strong>the</strong>re isrecognition that you can’t meet <strong>the</strong> needs of somebodyin Berwick—or for that matter in Haltwhistle orKielder—just because <strong>the</strong>re is a centre in Blyth. It isnot feasible.Q106 Mr Llwyd: I am acutely aware of <strong>the</strong> problemsof delivering in <strong>the</strong> rural setting, and what you sayis quite encouraging. The model seems to workthroughout <strong>the</strong> large expanse.Sharon Spurling: Yes.