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

Ev 32 Justice Committee: Evidence29 January 2013 Juliet Lyon CBE, Frances Crook OBE and Clive Martinand diversion schemes in police stations and courtsacross England. They have a commitment to do thatby 2014. They promise £50 million to do so. Thosewill positively advantage women. They will advantageeverybody who has a learning disability or a mentalhealth need, but they will positively advantage womenbecause, proportionately, there are more women in thatcircumstance than there are men. So, in terms of healthand welfare, there are some strides being taken andthere are the new Health and Wellbeing Boards, whichwould capitalise on that.The other thing that we have not alluded to, and Iam sorry to bring it in on the back of your question,is that the LASPO Act—Legal Aid, Sentencing andPunishment of Offenders Act 2012—has introducedthe “no real prospect” test in relation to remand andbail. Again, significantly more women are generallyheld in custody awaiting trial, sometimes in order toobtain a mental health assessment, and that is the linkwith your question. Magistrates are no longer allowedto do that unless they have very particular reasonsfor remand. If someone is facing no real prospect ofa custodial penalty for their offending, then they willnot be held in custodial remand, which means thatwomen’s prison numbers are going to drop. It is theperfect time, given that they are going to drop, to dosomething, one, about the leadership, two, about theestate, but in particular about the women’s centres andcreating a network of alternatives for the courts.There is leadership from the new Minister, who, Ithink, wants to succeed in reform and has a reformagenda of her own. It is the first time in a long time thata Minister has been given responsibility for women’sprisons as a group and for women offenders. That isimportant, but, unless opportunities are grasped, thenit will slip through our fingers. The Crime and CourtsBill was carrying an amendment, introduced in theLords, about women, and we were really disappointedto see that the Government have just applied to strikeout that amendment at the Committee stage of the Bill.So maybe the Government are failing to grasp some ofthe opportunities presented.Q159 Graham Stringer: You took the opportunityto give a very comprehensive answer, but within thatanswer are you saying that the statistics that are keptnow are poor and not valuable and do you have asuggestion for improving those statistics?Juliet Lyon: They vary from one women’s centre toanother. It is helpful having a co‐ordinating group,Women’s Breakout, and it is helpful that the Ministryof Justice has wanted to try and encourage or helppeople to evaluate, but the fact is that, as things stand,you would not get from each women’s centre the kindof quality of statistics that you would get from the best.Again, it is a question of learning from the best. Howcan information be kept and how can it be co-ordinatedacross different local authority departments such ashealth and housing? Would you say it was a success,for example, that a woman who had been in a desperatestate who came to a women’s centre, secured safehousing and was able to keep that safe housing becauseshe was a good tenant, was able to look after her child,who had maybe been in and out of other arrangements,but still occasionally shoplifted because she had notfully broken her drug habit? You need to think howwe would evaluate that as a success. Her offendingis beginning to drop, it has not ceased altogether, butother aspects of her life have been changed to the pointthat she is likely to be able to take more responsibilityfor her life.Q160 Graham Stringer: You touched on theanswers to my next two questions as well, so we canbe relatively brief. Where does the shift from local tonational commissioning lead us—the post‐Corstonagenda?Juliet Lyon: The shift from local to national?Graham Stringer: Yes.Juliet Lyon: We referred to it earlier in relation toconcerns. Potentially, it is not a good move becausewhat we have seen, and what Baroness Corston sawin her review, is local partnerships operating on a verylocalised basis and quite particularly the partnershipsbetween the probation trusts and the women’s centres,which appear to be doing very well. We are not clear yethow that will work in terms of national commissioning.It is important nationally to have some ring‐fencedmoneys. What is going to make the difference ismoney and you could say justice reinvestment—if youare closing women’s prisons, you are going to havesome money available to reinvest in more effectiveservices—and law, and I have referred to, currently,the amendment that is at least a legislative foothold forreform. But, if you cannot corral law and money, then Iam not sure that just relying on national commissioningwill be enough. National commissioning has a place inthat it will say, “We will ring‐fence moneys or insiston moneys for women and prioritise women,” but itcannot do what can happen locally and we have notseen the arrangements in terms of how it is proposedto interrelate the local and the national. But Clive mayhave seen that through CLINKS.Clive Martin: I want to make the point that there isa distinction between national commissioning for thewhole estate as it is proposed in the rehabilitationrevolution—and, as a result of that nationalcommissioning, some service or other gets devolvedlocally for women—compared with maintaining anational commissioning model for women separate tothe general commissioning model, if you see what Imean. While there are some advantages to the latter,where there is a national commissioning model thatat least can ensure that the money dedicated to thoseservices goes to women, I think there is some potentialin that. In the former model, where we are talkingabout bundling up probation services into 16 differentlots that are let to a prime contractor—and within thatlot there then seems to be some complicated thinkingas to how you have rehabilitation services for peoplecoming out of prison as some sort of subcontract tothat lot, so you get the same provider and then asanother sort of subcontract to that you have somethingfor women in there—it feels like it is all devolved fartoo many times for it to have any real meaning andit is losing value the whole time because of the waythat and profit taking and so on have to work. Thereneeds to be a distinction between the current nationalcommissioning model, from which women fall out as