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

Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 475 March 2013 Liz Calderbank, Val Castell and Liz Rijnenberginclination to send somebody into custody because youwill see that they are doing much more of the samesort of thing, and we will not have quite this linearapproach that I spoke of earlier. However, it couldgo the other way: if you also have the rehabilitativeelement, it could lead people to say that there is notthe harm in a custodial sentence because you have theother work going on as well. It could go either way.Liz Calderbank: We need to be very careful aboutthe proposals in relation to the under-12-monthscases and support post-release. I totally applaud thenotion of giving support post-release, but if it is partof statutory supervision, as we have seen before inthe proposals for custody plus, the danger is that youend up increasing the prison population, as Val has________________Examination of Witnessesbeen saying. The emphasis on custody and supportcan be very attractive, and you may see an increasethere, but the other element of it is that people will becoming back for breach, again for offences that are ofa relatively low level.Val Castell: We feel very strongly that it should be upto the courts to decide whether there is a supervisionperiod after short-term custody, especially whereyou have had somebody going into custody becauseof breach or something. Then they come out into asupervision period, then they breach that, and youhave a yo-yo effect if you are not very careful. It issomething that the courts would welcome havingavailable to them, but we would like it as an option tobe put in place when we feel that it is suitable.Witnesses: Nick Hardwick, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, and Eoin McLennan Murray, President, PrisonGovernors’ Association, gave evidence.Q226 Mr Llwyd: Good morning, gentlemen. MrHardwick, in your written evidence, at paragraph 13,you refer to some improvements post-Corston. Inparticular, routine strip searching has gone, there isreception on the first night, and a range of physicalhealth treatment and management of women withsubstance abuse problems. You then go on in paragraph16 to list some very serious concerns, quite rightly, ona recent inspection. What is your overall impression ofthe progress in implementing the Corston report sinceit was published?Nick Hardwick: As you say, there have beenimprovements that have made a significant differenceto women in custody. The most striking bit of evidencein support of that is the reduction in incidents of selfharm.In the last year for which I have figures, therewas a reduction of 8%. That is a significant factor. Selfharmamong women now makes up 30% of all selfharmincidents, whereas it used to be 50%. The numberof self-inflicted deaths last year was two, comparedwith four or five the year before.These are real tangible improvements in the conditionsfor women in custody. However, when you go intoa women’s prison, to me at any rate they appear asshocking now as when I first went in. The self-harmlevels may be down to 30%, but that is still a strikinglyhigh quantity of self-harm. If you are on one of thewings during association and talking to women, yousee it—you see the scarring on their arms. In fact, witheveryone you talk to you see the levels of mental healthproblems, and you hear about problems with distresscaused by separation from their families, all of thosesorts of things.The fundamental things that Corston talked about, itseems to me, are that you have women in prison whoprobably should not be there in the first place, and thatthose who are there are in prisons that are too big andin the wrong place, and that is because there has notbeen the drive from the centre to sort that out. Thosecriticisms—those fundamental strategic criticisms—remain as valid now as when Baroness Corston madethem a few years ago.Eoin McLennan Murray: I do not disagree withwhat Nick has said. The female population in termsof numbers is under 5% of the total population, butthe needs of women are obviously very different, andthat was clearly recognised in the Corston report. Theproposals, suggestions and recommendations madein the report were common sense, and the PrisonGovernors Association embraced many of those ideas.In terms of implementing many of the recommendationsthat fell within the remit of the governor, good progresshas been made, but that progress is dwarfed by themagnitude of the changes needed to transform custodyfor women in this country.Q227 Mr Llwyd: I realise that Mr Hardwick washere for the earlier evidence session, but none the lessI would like to ask the question. Have you detected alack of strategic impetus relating to women offenderssince the NOMS women’s team was disbanded? Whatdo you think should be done to re-energise the process?Nick Hardwick: I do think that there has been a lack ofimpetus. In some things, notably, provision for womenis lagging behind. For instance, the benchmarkingstandards to date have not made any distinction betweenwomen’s and men’s prisons. My understanding is thatthey are now developing benchmarking standards forwomen’s prisons. They are not in place yet, but youwould think that that was something that they wouldwant to do in parallel. There are other examples wherethere has been a lack of impetus.It is a good thing, I think, that Helen Grant has beenappointed as Minister with responsibility for women,but she needs behind her machinery with sufficientweight to make an impact not merely within theMinistry of Justice but at a cross-departmental level. Ithink that the dismantling of the women’s team, giventhe cross-departmental nature of its work, has been asignificant problem.Eoin McLennan Murray: We used to have anoperational head in charge of women. It was like anarea manager’s position, so all the governors from thewomen’s estate would have a clear operational headand there used to be regular meetings. We do not have