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

Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 3529 January 2013 Jacqueline McKenzie, Deborah Cowley, Rachel Halford and Sherry AshfieldQ169 Steve Brine: Thank you very much for coming.What would you like to see come out of the MoJ’sreview of the custodial estate? Maybe you would liketo see it shrunk a lot, but I am keen to explore theoptions for managing female prisoners. What wouldyou like to see come out of their review of the estates,starting with Deborah Cowley?Deborah Cowley: Just quickly, I want to say what Ithought about Corston as well, because Corston didnot deal much with families of women offenders,but in so far as it did it talked about small custodialunits, which people have talked about a lot already.Also, it emphasised the importance of co‐operationbetween local social care, health services, prisons andcriminal justice. We still do not have the small social,local secure units, but also for a long time there wasno, or very little, meaningful co‐operation betweencriminal justice and local services, especially prisonsand local services. That has started to happen nowbut not noticeably specifically in relation to women’sprisons, even though they are facing greater difficultiesas a result of distance and also the higher needs ofwomen that Frances Crook referred to in terms ofthe fragmentation of the family that happens and lesslikelihood of someone remaining in the family homeand holding the family together.I would like to see the small local units, but I wouldlike to see an acknowledgment that there needs tobe engagement from the very beginning with localservices and an understanding, which is now comingabout in criminal justice, I think, that in fact that doesnot mean your locality, the locality even for the smallsecure small unit. How small can they be? There mayvery well be issues about crossing local governmentboundaries and PCCs and so forth.Rachel Halford: What would I like to see? It goes withthe gender equality as well, so there is a real inequalityhere around the categorisation and I would like to seethat reviewed. Whereas in the male estate there are A,B, C and D categories, in the women’s estate there are“open” and “closed”. The impact of that is that womenserving slightly longer sentences are unable to movethrough the sentences. There are 200 and somethingplaces in open prisons. Together with that, there is alack of women‐specific programmes. What we knowis that with women there is a high rate of mental healthproblems. The mental health diversion schemes arefantastic, but what we also know from our experienceis that mental health issues are not highlighted until thewoman is in prison. It is not until she has come off thedrugs or she is away from the situation, the violence,that the mental health symptoms become known.Consequently, going back to what Sherry was saying,there is a lack of specific programmes. I would liketo see more investment and consistency across theestate. At the moment, there is one specific programmeand that is in Foston Hall. They can take a cohort—it is a care programme—of eight to 10 women every10 weeks. That means actually there are not a lot ofwomen that are going through their sentence planning.What we would like to see is more programmes acrossthe estate.Q170 Steve Brine: Sherry, do you want to addanything to that?Sherry Ashfield: Yes. Can I add to that that, as wellas seeing more programmes, we need to look at howthe programmes knit together? While I think there isa lot of advantage and forward movement in relation,for example, to the personality disorder agenda,when we look at where that fits in relation to otherprogrammes for high risk female sex offenders or otherhigh risk offenders, they are not actually matching uptogether. So you have one department that is makingpronouncements about one thing but, when you checkwith another department about how that is going toimpact on your particular client group, they do notknow.Q171 Nick de Bois: My questions are for JacquelineMcKenzie, if I may. Just before I ask you a generalquestion—which is pretty much an open goal foryou—I would like to put some context in, if I may,quickly. Can you tell me if you know what percentageof female prisoners are foreign national prisonersand also how many of those you believe may be as aresult of trafficking? Have you got very broad headlinestatistics on those? You may not. I know it is a bit of alow ball to throw you.Jacqueline McKenzie: Partially. The problem isalways about definitions. In terms of the statistics forforeign national prisoners, for women we believe it isabout 15% and it varies. There is a margin of error of2% either way. In terms of those who are trafficked,we work with quite a lot of women who we believeare trafficked but there are still problems about thedefinitions. So we do not have statistics at the momentbut we are in the process of conducting some research.Nick de Bois: That would be helpful. It was just astatement that accompanied the “No Way Out” reportand I was trying to put some context on it.Chair: Before we leave foreign nationals, could I askMr Corbyn to come in on that? Were you going on tosomething else?Q172 Nick de Bois: No. I was going to stick on thissubject, Chair.Your report threw up one or two successes where youfelt that the stay in jail at the end, down to immigrationappeals, had been shortening, which is encouraging,but overall how do you think foreign national prisonerscan be provided for in any new Government strategy?What will make the difference? I would also like toknow, if you wouldn’t mind, to put that in context, whatyour concerns or positives might be about existing andfuture commissioning arrangements. Will it make itharder, worse or whatever?Jacqueline McKenzie: What we would like to seeare issues that are a step before, which are aroundsentencing and sentencing guidelines, because weare still seeing far too many women who would bedescribed as foreign nationals going to prison fornon‐violent offences, offences where it is quite clearthat they are a victim, people who are coerced intodrug trafficking, people who we believe—there issubstantial evidence to suggest—may well have beentrafficked and also the vast number of women who arecurrently in prison for passport document offences. Wehave some clients at the moment who have recentlyserved prison sentences because they undertook