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

Ev 26 Justice Committee: EvidenceTuesday 29 January 2013Members present:Sir Alan Beith (Chair)Steve BrineRehman ChishtiJeremy CorbynNick de BoisMr Elfyn LlwydAndy McDonaldGraham StringerYasmin Qureshi________________Examination of WitnessesWitnesses: Juliet Lyon CBE, Director, Prison Reform Trust, Frances Crook OBE, Director, The HowardLeague for Penal Reform, and Clive Martin, Director, Clinks, gave evidence.Chair: Ms Lyon from the Prison Reform Trust, MsCrook from the Howard League and Mr Martin fromClinks, welcome. At least two of you are quite regularvisitors to us, but you are as welcome as ever for thehelp you can give us in our inquiry on women offenders.I am just going to see if there are any interests to bedeclared.Mr Llwyd: I should declare that I am a member of theHoward League.Q138 Chair: Unless anyone else has anything toadd, that is probably the only relevant interest to bedeclared.To start us off, could you give us a concise view ofthe progress that has been made in implementing theCorston recommendations?Frances Crook: Perhaps I could give an overview aboutmy concerns as to what is happening at the moment.There was a great push towards trying to implementthe Corston recommendations, particularly with thefunding for the women’s centres, the establishment ofwomen’s centres in the community and the politicalsupport for the women’s centres, both at a local leveland national level, and the organisation that was set upto co‐ordinate them. That was all good grounding but ithas stalled recently. My concern is that there is supportat ministerial level, but I am less convinced that there issupport at Secretary of State level. We are particularlyworried, of course, about the funding. If women are tomanage in the community, helped to change and livelaw‐abiding lives and not come into contact with thecriminal justice system, we need to put that supportnetwork in at a local level, where they can get accessto the range of services that they need to deal with theirfamilies, debt, mental health, drug addiction, alcoholaddiction and their homelessness. That is where thewomen’s centres come in. If we do not have supportfor these centres, we are in real trouble.We can see that over the past year or so that, the prisonpopulation has dropped by around 3,000—which ismuch to be welcomed and saves the public a lot ofmoney, unnecessary money. This allows the Secretaryof State to close prisons, which will of course savequite a lot of money—however the women’s prisonpopulation has not fallen at the same rate as the men’s.Unless there is real leadership given at a national level,we will fail to see the real changes in practice affectingso many women and their families across the country.Juliet Lyon: I was pleased to be a member of theCorston review, following the deaths of the six youngwomen at Styal. I had high hopes at that point thatthe Corston review would be the pivotal route tochanging what had been a very disappointing responseto previous inquiries. Just briefly, in 2000, the PrisonReform Trust published the independent Wedderburnreview, which had similar recommendations to thoseof Baroness Corston. Following that, there wasFawcett; there was a Cabinet Office review and a jointinspectorate thematic report. There were a number ofreviews, all of which said pretty much the same thing,that it would be perfectly possible in relation to publicsafety to reduce the number of women going to prison,that the emphasis should be on proportionality insentencing and fairness and there should be options inthe community, bearing in mind that most women werenon‐violent, petty persistent offenders in the main andthat many had primary care responsibilities for theirchildren.As Frances has said already, myriad needs had to bemet, otherwise the offending was likely to continue.So when Baroness Corston undertook her review,particularly given the reason that it was brought intobeing, we had hopes. After it was submitted to theGovernment, there was a very long period of timebefore there was any formal response. Thereafter, theGovernment said that, in principle, they accepted—Ithink it was—41 of the 43 recommendations. Butapart from some very distinct changes, which I drawattention to, the response has been slow. One changewas stopping routine strip searching, in recognition ofthe number of women who had been sexually abusedor experienced domestic violence. Routine stripsearching was seen to be no longer acceptable. Thatwas a reform that was possible because of the Corstonreview and that was important.We then thought that Government would move on tosome of the wider recommendations, in particular theblueprint for reform, which is included in BaronessCorston’s review, which made it absolutely clearthat you needed leadership and accountability, apreparedness to work across Government Departments,and that the solutions would not all be found within theprison system, or indeed even within the Ministry ofJustice. In particular, she drew attention to the healthneeds of women, which we would say are paramountin relation to mental health need, substance misuse andso forth. The response has been disappointingly slow,the leadership has been largely absent and there is thekind of feeling of, “Accountability—so what?”