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

Ev 42 Justice Committee: Evidence5 March 2013 Liz Calderbank, Val Castell and Liz Rijnenbergbe seen by their probation officer. Again, you do nothave all of those resources geared towards women inone place, and they are not women-only environments.Liz Calderbank: What we were seeing in terms of theinspection programme, and have seen since, is that, inthose areas where there are no women’s communitycentres, some have responded very imaginatively andcreatively in setting up, say, unpaid work projectsexclusively for women, and with women supervisors.At the time of the inspection, we asked why that wasnot universal practice, because it seemed eminentlysensible to us. We were told by some areas that itwas because of the difficulty in recruiting womensupervisors. I have to say that that seemed a veryinadequate answer.We have also seen some areas where the probationtrusts themselves, although not setting up women’scentres, have set up significant provisions for women,which have worked very effectively. There are ways ofaddressing the same kind of needs.Q203 Nick de Bois: I applaud the aims, but I supposethat I am pressing for whether there is any way inwhich we will be able to work out its effectiveness—for example, by reductions in reoffending or breaching.I do not think that many would disagree with the sensethat this is the right thing to do, but I am looking forsome evidence that it is working.Liz Calderbank: That is quite thin on the ground,unless Liz can enlighten me. Certainly, at the time ofthe inspection, we were quite critical of the fact that,despite all the work that had been undertaken, littleattention had been paid to what kind of performancemeasures you were going to have.Q204 Nick de Bois: You would agree that we shouldtry to do that.Liz Calderbank: Yes, to see what was effective or not.As a result, although probation trusts were doing allthis work, they were not sighted as to what was havingthe most impact. That has been a key issue in terms ofits sustainability.Q205 Nick de Bois: Let us leave that, if we may. Thathas been very helpful.The gender equality duty has now been replaced by abroader equality duty. To what extent have statutoryequality duties assisted in the development of services,to prevent women from offending, at a local level? Togive you a broader remit, how visible is gender in localstrategic discussions about offending? Can you giveme a feel for that?Liz Calderbank: They certainly help to concentratethe mind. Of course, the probation trusts and othersworking in the field are subject to a whole numberof statutory duties, which can but generally don’t setup potentially conflicting priorities. That is where theimportance of champions and leadership from thecentre kicks in, particularly when you are looking atwork that cuts across Government Departments.Q206 Nick de Bois: Do you think that it drivespeople to pay attention, as opposed to it being done ina prescribed way?Liz Calderbank: It is a way of holding them to account,to actually taking the work forward.Q207 Nick de Bois: Did you want to add anything,Ms Rijnenberg?Liz Rijnenberg: It would be useful if there were crossdepartmentalGovernment targets for outcomes forwomen offenders. The Equality Act could be used as alever to ensure that needs are more prominent and thattangible outcomes are driven forward.Val Castell: If it was not for that statutory duty, thenumbers of women would be too small to encourage alot of these provisions to be made. That has very muchdriven a lot of the work on that.Liz Calderbank: That is a very important point. Theexistence of the gender duty is extremely significant.Q208 Nick de Bois: It is not over-prescriptive, in thesense that it is there as a benchmark and drives workon the ground. As yet, we are not sure what evidencethere is for outcomes, but we sense that it is going inthe right direction. Is that a fair summary of what wehave been exploring?Liz Rijnenberg: It is an option within the jointstrategic assessments that probation, with all the localpartnerships, is able to raise women’s equality as anissue, along with the other protected characteristics ofindividuals.Nick de Bois: Thank you very much.Q209 Jeremy Corbyn: A lot has been said sinceCorston about reducing the number of custodialsentences for women, and indeed the length of them.Realistically, not an enormous amount has changed interms of the number of women prisoners. What moredo you think can be done—this is for all of you?Liz Calderbank: May I start? The process needs to startfurther back. We are talking about women offenders,but we should be looking at adolescents and teenagers,and looking much more at preventing those problemsfrom occurring. We should be focusing our efforts onlooking at girls who are excluded from school aged 13and 14, because by the time that they are 16 and 17,too often, they may have one or more children and bewell on the way into pathways that will take them intooffending and custodial sentences.For me, the focus of this work needs to be pulled muchfurther back. There is a particular issue for us aboutgirls and young women in the criminal justice system. Iwas talking to colleagues at the university of Liverpool,in the psychology and health in society section, aboutwork that they are doing on the increasing number ofgirls involved in violence and in under-age drinking.Of course, all of these are going to be pathways intocustodial sentences. We have to pull our efforts furtherback, and start them sooner, if we are going to beeffective.Val Castell: I think that there will be a knock-on effect.If you can reduce the number of mothers going toprison, then the learned behaviour over generationswill gradually improve as well.Liz Rijnenberg: I agree very much with what has beensaid. We need to focus much more on children and youngpeople, particularly young women. A huge number ofyoung women who go into care subsequently end up