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

Ev 48 Justice Committee: Evidence5 March 2013 Nick Hardwick and Eoin McLennan Murraythat any more. NOMS has gone through a number ofdifferent facelifts with the budget cuts and the generalreorganisation. The current temporary head of thewomen and equalities group, which it is now called, isa gentleman called Chris Barnett-Page, but he is not anoperational person, so we still have no operational leadthat can galvanise and basically lead the operation. 1Q228 Mr Llwyd: Interrupting you very rudely, if heis not an operational person, what on earth is he?Eoin McLennan Murray: I am not suggesting that heis not good or anything like that, but he is not from theoperational side of the business. He is from the policyand administrative side.Q229 Chair: I had the same thought in my mind. It isabout his background, not his function.Eoin McLennan Murray: That is correct.Q230 Jeremy Corbyn: Thank you for coming togive evidence today. The female prison estate ascurrently configured and resourced is barely adequatefor the needs of women prisoners. How do you seeit developing? Do you see more smaller prisons andsmaller units, or do you see a continuation more or lessof the current estate?Eoin McLennan Murray: There is just about to bea review of the female estate by NOMS. Certainly,the Prison Governors Association would like to seethe Corston recommendations put into effect. Thepopulation is so small and so dispersed over thecountry that visiting arrangements are obviously verydifficult, and much more difficult for women than formen, so the effects of imprisonment on women aremuch harsher in that respect.We would like to see smaller units. First, let me say thatwe do not need so many women in prison, bearing inmind that something like 52% of the serving populationare serving less than six months, predominantly fornon-violent offences. We feel that most women couldbe dealt with in the community. It would reduce theprison population significantly if that was adopted.Furthermore, because you would have a much smallerpopulation, it would make no sense—Q231 Jeremy Corbyn: I am sorry to interrupt you,but by how much could it be reduced? How muchsmaller could it be?Eoin McLennan Murray: I made a note on that. Itshows that 36% of women who are currently servingare for handling and theft and that 81% who arecurrently serving are for non-violent offences. Wecould be quite radical and say that we would reducethe population by something like 80% if you just putwomen who were a danger to society into custody. Theothers could be dealt with in a community setting.Q232 Chair: Forgive me, Mr Corbyn, but is it not partof the problem that the courts want to demonstrate insome clear way that the handling and theft behaviour,1Note by witness: Chris was an operational grade in the pastbut has never been a substantive governing governor. He hasworked at Prison Service HQ in a non operational role forseveral years now and was recently appointed as TemporaryHead of the Women and Equalities Group.which may be persistent if it has led to a sentence, issomething that society is not going to accept? Thereis a problem about the courts being satisfied that theyhave an alternative to achieve that.Eoin McLennan Murray: The question is, what dowe mean by punishment? Do we not want to reducethe chances of women reoffending? Currently, 50%or just over reoffend within a year. If the aim of theGovernment is to reduce reoffending, they should befairly pragmatic and follow what works. If you wereto do that, you would not necessarily want to look atjust punishing people. There are lots of ways to reducereoffending without just punishing people. In fact,just punishment does not have much of an impact onreoffending.Nick Hardwick: To add to that, it is not just a questionof smaller units. That is feasible within the currentestate, but it will not be enough in itself. It is also aquestion of who works there, and the training andcompetences and selection processes for those people.Even if you have smaller units, if you simply take staffout of the predominantly male estate and put them inwomen’s prisons and expect them to carry on in theway that they did, that would not have the desiredeffect.Q233 Jeremy Corbyn: My next question wasexactly that. What do you feel about the dominanceof male staff and male working methods in women’sprisons? Do you think that there ought to be somebetter or changed training and benchmarking of staffarrangements in these prisons?Nick Hardwick: I think the balance is wrong. That issomething that we repeatedly raise in inspections. Thegender balance of staff is wrong. It is really strikingat a practical level. I remember being at a prison oneevening and going to the mother and baby unit. Theyhad one male operational support grade supervising themother and baby unit. That simply was not appropriate.That has happened at two establishments. There is avariety of things like that.My view is that one could draw up a list of competencesor criteria so that you could accredit staff to workpredominately in the women’s estate. It is important,particularly if what you are looking at is a model whereyou may have women held in a smaller unit that isattached in some way to a bigger male establishment,that you do not have staff simply shifting between thetwo, taking the attitudes and working practices of oneto the other. It is not enough simply to develop smallerunits. You also have to have a distinct staff cadre, whohave the skills, competences and the sympathy orempathy to work with women prisoners.Q234 Graham Stringer: What are the particularproblems that women foreign nationals have in prison,and how could their situation be improved?Nick Hardwick: To some extent, they are the sameas for other women but exacerbated. The issue, forinstance, of separation from family is a greater onefor foreign national women. Often, in my experience,foreign national women—this is a generalisation—tend to have larger families, more children. If you donot have any other visits, you will, I think, be permittedone five-minute telephone call a month to your family.