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

Ev 24 Justice Committee: Evidence15 January 2013 Peter Kilgarriff, Jackie Russell, Sharon Spurling and Joy Doalmore commercial. He quoted that an organisation hadspoken to him and said that it was only being offered acontract with a prime, which would mean they wouldlose money. His response was, “Why would you takeit?”You have the voluntary sector here. They take itbecause they are concerned about the woman. Theyare working there because they are concerned aboutgetting that woman into employment, not about sayingthey are providing a service that takes somebody else’soutputs and claims the profit. There is a real need tounderstand the motivation behind voluntary sectororganisations and why they behave in a way that isnot necessarily commercial, because by behavingcommercially they have to walk away. That is whatPBR is doing.Q129 Steve Brine: All of which is why the coalition—your coalition, not our happy family—says that what isbeing planned is a confused jigsaw without any clarityof vision.Peter Kilgarriff: Yes.Q130 Chair: That brings me to something you bothsaid earlier. Is it your belief that the Governmentare not going to produce, as they said they would, astrategy for women offenders?Q131 Steve Brine: Before you answer that, perhapsI may raise the gloom from my depression and let inthe sunlight. Last week, when the statement on therehabilitation revolution was put out, one of the MPssaid, “Will the Justice Secretary assure me that he willuse the consultation period to reflect carefully on howa payment-by-results method will need to be adaptedto meet the particular needs of women offenders?”,to which he replied, “I can give the hon. Lady thatassurance.” He went on to say they recognisedcompletely that there were different challenges foradult males, young people and women in prisons.He mentioned the new Minister, the Member forMaidstone and The Weald, Helen Grant, a formermember of this Committee and now at the MOJ, whohas taken responsibility for women in prisons. Doesthat provide any sunshine?Peter Kilgarriff: We have asked to meet Ms Grant butshe has said, “Not yet.” Obviously, she is new in postand needs to get a handle on her brief. I spoke earlierabout PBR. There have been attempts to look at this.We have attempted to look at what we might do withPBR. Was it feasible to do something with women?Because of the small numbers it seems a really difficultthing. There may well be possibilities, though, outsidethe criminal justice system on some of the issues likechild care and children going into care. There may wellbe some possibility of PBR on particular issues thataffect women going into the criminal justice system,but it is difficult to see it replicated on a greater scale.Q132 Steve Brine: Coming back to the Chairman’squestion, you said you did not believe there would bea women offender strategy, which the Government hadlong since promised.Peter Kilgarriff: They did promise.Q133 Steve Brine: Do you not believe them? I guessin a way it is a “Does anyone care?” question.Peter Kilgarriff: I do not think we will get a strategy.At the very best, we will get a set of guidelines forpractitioners. Even that is difficult now, because for thepractitioners, the probation service, it looks as thoughnearly all the women—Joy’s and Sharon’s clients—will be shifted out of the responsibility of the probationservice, if what is in the document comes to pass. It isdifficult to know to whom you will be talking. One ofthe more depressing things we have found in talking topolicymakers, civil servants and Ministers is that thereis very little leadership from the top at the moment.In talking to officials, they see their role as advising,guiding and helping, and there is no real leadership.Chair: In relation to women.Peter Kilgarriff: In relation to women; that is what Imean, yes.Q134 Chair: Your contention would be thatleadership is really being exercised by taking forwardthe payment-by-results programme and is determinedmainly by the predominant part of the criminal justicesystem, which is men.Peter Kilgarriff: Yes, absolutely.Jackie Russell: There was an opportunity beforeChristmas when the Ministry of Justice put out acontract for infrastructure organisations in VCS todevelop an action plan by March for how the VCScould be better engaged in PBR. The reason I say itwas an opportunity is that Women’s Breakout didexpress interest and did not succeed in that. There willbe various reasons of course, but it was an opportunity.Our expression of interest was to say, “So far, you havedesigned everything around men and tweaked it forwomen. This is an opportunity to look at PBR througha women-specific sector, which will have the sameissues as other small voluntary sector organisations;so we will have transition and transferability.” I thinkonly two of us bid for that and Women’s Breakout didnot secure the contract. It was a lost opportunity. Eventhough we might not have had a strong organisationalsize behind us, we were very specific and focused intoone area, which could have been a microcosm of thesector as well. So I think that was an opportunity lost.Loraine Gelsthorpe and Carol Hedderman, who areboth academics—I know Loraine submitted writtenevidence to you—produced a paper for the ProbationJournal just before Christmas about why PBR didnot work for women. You may wish to refer to that assomething that may help you.In response to your question, “Does anyone ingovernment care?”, it is very difficult for people tounderstand what goes on for those who are not in theirexperience. If you look at government, it is people,isn’t it? Government is people. If you look at the livesof those people, often they are quite narrow; theyare not lives that can in any way connect to womenoffenders and women at risk of offending, with thatchaotic sense of their lives and that trauma that theyhave gone through. Their whole experience is verydifficult to connect to. For instance, if you were sittinghere looking at services for older people, you couldthink, “Well, this might be my parent”, or, “This iswhere I’m going to be.” We all know older people and