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

Ev 40 Justice Committee: EvidenceTuesday 5 March 2013Members present:Sir Alan Beith (Chair)Steve BrineRehman ChishtiJeremy CorbynNick de BoisGareth Johnson________________Mr Elfyn LlwydSeema MalhotraGraham StringerMike WeatherleyExamination of WitnessesWitnesses: Liz Calderbank, HM Chief Inspector of Probation (Acting), Val Castell, Magistrates’ AssociationSentencing Committee, and Liz Rijnenberg, Chief Executive, Wiltshire Probation Trust, and Probation Chiefs’Association Lead for Women Offenders, gave evidence.Chair: Welcome. We are very glad to have thehelp this morning of Liz Calderbank, the actingChief Inspector of Probation, Val Castell from theMagistrates Association Sentencing Committee, andLiz Rijnenberg from the Probation Chiefs Association,who are here to help us with the work that we aredoing on women offenders. I ask Mr Llwyd to openthe questions.Q193 Mr Llwyd: Good morning. Would you pleasegive us your overall impression of the progress that hasbeen made in implementing the recommendations ofthe landmark Corston report?Val Castell: The word that I would use is variable.In some areas there has been considerable progress,and in other areas not very much at all. I use theword “areas” in two senses, because there havebeen differences geographically with what has beenimplemented, and there are also some parts of theCorston recommendations that have been implementedmuch more fully than other parts.Geographically, there has been a lot of work on the partof NOMS to bring some existing women’s projectsunder the NOMS umbrella and to help other projectsstart. In some areas of the country, that has workedextremely well, but other areas of the country still donot have any specific women’s community sentenceprovision. The area where there has probably beenvery little progress has been in trying to bring aboutsmaller custodial units for women.Q194 Mr Llwyd: In your evidence to us, you referto the Corston report’s highlighting of the fact that nofewer than 80% of women in prison have one or moremental health problems. There is a prevalence out inthe community as well. Have you seen any evidencethat something is being done to tackle that?Val Castell: Yes. Certainly, in my area we have amuch better provision these days; we have a mentalhealth worker at the court. We still have a problemwith borderline mental health cases, where the mentalhealth worker says, “Well, actually there doesn’t seemto be any clinical problem.” Of course, a lot of thesethings can be exacerbated by things like custodialsentences, so it may be that some of these problemswould not become apparent until later on in theprocess. Yes, there have been improvements; and, yes,we do have a mental health worker in court. That doesnot necessarily mean that these problems show up atthat stage, and I think that there is more still to be done.Q195 Mr Llwyd: I take it that, overall, this is verypatchy; it depends where you are. It is a postcodelottery almost, isn’t it?Val Castell: Yes. Again, a lot of the women’s projectsdo work with mental health problems, but they are noteverywhere. I know that when Baroness Corston gaveyou her evidence, she talked about Missing Link inBristol. It does a lot of work with women who havemental health difficulties. It only works with the Bristolmagistrates court; it does not work, for example, withour court, which is next door, in South Gloucestershire,so you have a clear difference in the assistance thatwomen are getting in one area and in another.Liz Calderbank: My overall impression would beto say that probation trusts have had difficulty insustaining momentum following the publication ofthe Corston report. Certainly, what we saw at thetime of the field work undertaken two years ago wasconsiderable energy, particularly at a strategic level,in taking initiatives forward. That was led by thecross-government women’s group and a number ofchampions at national and local level.At the time, the criticism that we made of this wasthat, although there was a lot of work happeningstrategically, it was only just beginning to cascadedown to an operational level. You will recollect fromthe report that we were quite critical of some elementsof practice that we saw. What we also saw, of course,was the growing emergence of women’s centres andthe work that they were doing, and the various otherinitiatives that were coming along.I would very much agree with Val’s description that it ispatchy. It was patchy then, and it is still patchy as far asI can see. The difficulty of maintaining this momentumat a time of considerable organisational change, andthe prospect of considerable organisational change, isreally quite a challenge.Liz Rijnenberg: There has been a huge impetus toimproving awareness that women require a differentand distinct approach. The development of women’scommunity projects has been far-reaching, in terms ofproviding a range of pathways for women in one singleplace.The issue is that the funding for those projects is stillfairly limited; and there are a few areas that still do