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

Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 495 March 2013 Nick Hardwick and Eoin McLennan MurrayIf you have a partner and a number of children, that isnot particularly helpful. If you have a visitor, perhapsa relative here comes to visit, you do not get your freetelephone call.There is also an issue with trafficked women. What wefind is that a significant number of women prisonershave been trafficked at one point, and there is notenough awareness among staff about referral to theappropriate mechanisms. There are issues abouttranslation and interpretation services, where oftenpeople simply do not understand what is happening.It is not merely a language thing but that people mayperhaps have very different expectations of what aprison environment will be like. There is a range ofissues for foreign national women prisoners that makestheir experience worse than for others.Q235 Graham Stringer: Many of these women arepotentially subject to deportation and need advice onhow to appeal. That is partly what I was looking for inmy question. Do you think that these women get theright level of advice and service, and how could it beimproved?Nick Hardwick: No, they do not get the right level ofadvice and service. They need that, and it would be asignificant help. Some of them would be better goingback to their own country.What we find is that often some of that advice and supportis provided by quite small voluntary organisations likeHibiscus, but their funding is under a lot of pressure.Those sorts of organisations are getting squeezed outby some of the new funding arrangements. There is arisk there, but, if what these organisations are doing ishelping a woman to move successfully back to her owncountry, that is in everybody’s interests.Q236 Seema Malhotra: I want some clarification.Did you say that all women prisoners, or was it justforeign nationals, get five minutes a month on thephone?Nick Hardwick: Yes, you get one free five-minutetelephone call per month. If you can pay, if you havemoney, you can make as many telephone calls as youwant, although obviously the cost would be greater. If,for instance, you are here on your own and you haveno family sending money to you in prison, you get onefive-minute telephone call a month.Q237 Seema Malhotra: Do you have any statisticson how many women use only that single five-minutefree period and do not make any other calls?Nick Hardwick: I do not have statistics on that, but itis certainly something that we regularly come across inour inspections.Eoin McLennan Murray: May I add something onforeign nationals? On the male side, they have prisonsthat specialise and just hold foreign nationals, so thelevel of service tends to be better there because theyhave very good links with the Border Agency. Onthe female estate, two prisons are designated, one inthe south and one in the north, that will take foreignnationals. Downview is in the south, but I cannotremember the name of the one in the north. Therewill probably be better provision there than in otherprisons, where that specialism has not yet evolved, butyou could make improvements to the female estate bydoing more of what we see in the male estate, in termsof specialising so that you meet the needs of foreignnationals.The other issue for foreign nationals is that many ofthem do not know where their final destination willbe. Sometimes, they do not know whether or notthey are going to be deported, which means that theirresettlement plans can be in disarray. You can end updischarging people who stay in this country, for whomno arrangements whatsoever have been made. That isanother dilemma.Nick Hardwick: There is often the assumption thatwomen will be deported at the end of their sentence,as with foreign national men, so no resettlement orrehabilitation work takes place. In fact, many areallowed to stay in the end, so they will be released backinto the community sometimes without the support,supervision and preparation that other prisoners willhave. Even if they are going back to their own country,some resettlement would be worth while in reducingthe risk that they reoffend.Q238 Chair: In general, it would make more sensefor them not to be excluded from resettlement?Nick Hardwick: Absolutely. I do not understand thelogic behind excluding them. It is wishful thinking, itseems to me, and it does not work in practice.Q239 Steve Brine: Mr Hardwick, you touched onthis earlier when you talked about, for want of a betterterm, collocated provision on one site, so instead ofsmaller prisons or bigger prisons, having collocatedprisons. What might a family-friendly female estateregime look like—a family-friendly estate, as familiesneed fathers, too? What do you think a family-friendlyfemale estate might look like?Nick Hardwick: Leaving aside the questions oflocation and smaller units, there is a whole lot of workaround enabling women to maintain contact with theirfamilies. At a practical level, those are the sorts ofthings that we have been talking about, like phone callsand stuff, and that is important.There are also visit arrangements. We recentlyinspected Hydebank Wood prison in NorthernIreland, which had some problems. One of the thingsthat they did well there was that some women wereallowed six-hour visits with their families pretty muchunsupervised. They have a little unit attached to theprison where the women can cook for their children,and can care for them and mother them in an ordinarykind of way. Those sorts of more imaginative visitarrangements would be important, but added to thatis support for women in developing parenting skills ifthey have not had the opportunity to learn and developthem beforehand.The other issue is around mother and baby unitsin prisons. The ones that we see that are run byvoluntary groups or charities seem to work betterthan others. However, there is still an issue for most,with a preponderance of discipline officers in uniformproviding supervision, which is not appropriate. It isalso striking that mother and baby units are not fullyoccupied. There is a significant number of vacancies,and I do not understand the reason for that. I would