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

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Ev 60 Justice Committee: Evidence26 March 2013 Helen Grant MP, Ian Porée and Michael Spurrhas been very clear that that is the objective. Women’sreoffending rates are lower than men’s; that is positive.Overall, the rate for women is 19%, including allforms of conviction, compared with 29% for men; thatincludes cautions and so on. The focus is on providingthe right alternatives for sentencers in order to beable to meet the needs of the offence. As the Ministersaid, we are working on strengthening alternativesin the community, but we have not set a target forwhat the prison population should be. Our aim is toreduce reoffending. I expect that reducing reoffendingshould lead the prison population to reduce. It has beenreducing for women, which is positive, for that reason.Helen Grant: It also needs to be remembered that whogoes to prison is a matter for the independent judiciary.It is not a matter for Helen Grant or for anyone else.That is how it will have to remain. The judge hasaccess to all the circumstances and facts of the caseand will have to weigh them up and make a decision.What we want to do for that judge—that sentencer—isto give him or her the maximum number of optionspossible in terms of where they send a woman.Q294 Graham Stringer: I understand that, butearlier you talked about diversion strategies. I do notknow whether you want to expand on that or whetheryou could talk about reducing the use of custody forbreach—where women are sent to prison for breachingtheir terms when they would not have been sent toprison for the original offence.Helen Grant: There is a widely held perceptionthat many women in prison are there for breach ofa probation order or a licence for relatively minoroffences, but I have some figures before me that saythat, in 2009, 13% of women received into prisonon immediate custodial sentences were received forbreach of a court order, compared with 12% of men.The figures are not good, but they are, perhaps, not ashigh as some would make out.Q295 Graham Stringer: I have one last question. Youtalked about the measure of success being a reductionin reoffending. Are you still publishing statistics onreoffending after two years?Michael Spurr: The main reoffending figures arepublished on a one-year basis—that is the annual cycle.We can track reoffending over two years or longer,but the statistics that are normally quoted for thepercentage of people who reoffend are for reoffendingafter one year.Q296 Graham Stringer: Are they publicly availableafter two years?Michael Spurr: Yes.Q297 Mr Llwyd: Mr Spurr, earlier you used the word“segmentation”. What has the NOMS segmentationexercise revealed about the size of the gaps in theservice provision that the new commissioningarrangements under “Transforming Rehabilitation”will be expected to plug?Michael Spurr: I am not sure that the segmentation workis what is driving the “Transforming Rehabilitation”programme; Ian could and should speak about that ina moment. Segmentation identifies what the particularneeds of offender populations are and where we shouldtarget our limited resources to make best impact onthat. It is true for both men and women. We look atoffender group reconviction scores, take the highestriskpeople in terms of chances of reoffending—thoseat scores of over 50—look at what programmes andinterventions we are providing for those individuals,and make sure that we are targeting the right peopleto go into the right programmes. From a women’sperspective, for example, we were targeting womenat Drake Hall prison, which is in Staffordshire. Wehad a thinking skills programme—a cognitive-basedprogramme—there. When we looked at the needs ofthat population, we saw that they were a lower-riskgroup and were not benefiting from that programmeas much as others would have, so we switched to aprogramme called FOR, which focuses on practicalresettlement for women. That is what we mean bysegmentation.The “Transforming Rehabilitation” programme isaddressing a different issue. Many providers maywell use some of the data and evidence that we haveproduced on what makes the biggest difference, butit is about changing the way we deliver sentences inthe community and radically restructuring them so thatwe are able to extend provision, as you are aware, toall offenders in custody, including those serving shortsentences. That will impact particularly on women,because there are a disproportionate number of women,compared with men, serving short prison sentences. Iwill ask Ian to say a word about the “TransformingRehabilitation” programme, just to make that pointclearer.Ian Porée: Picking up from what Michael wasdescribing, earlier you asked what some of the areasare where we think we can still bring in significant newimprovements in how we work with women offenders.It would be in that area of managing the transition fromwithin custody back into the community and havinga proper through-the-gate or managed model, where,essentially, you have understood the needs of thewoman, prepared the release process and then supportedthe woman, on release, back in the community. The“Transforming Rehabilitation” programme will looknot only at bringing in scope those offenders servingshort custodial sentences but also at putting in placea through-the-gate service that helps to support theindividual through that period of time. At the moment,there is very little through-the-gate provision availablefrom custody back into the community. What thereforms propose is to put in place that level of support.As Michael has already said—Q298 Mr Llwyd: Could I interrupt you rudely for justone second? Are you saying that the intention would befor everyone, when they go through that gate, to havethe necessary back-up? Both you and I know that itis absolutely crucial that it is there, otherwise withinhours there is a tendency to reoffend.Ian Porée: That is the intention—essentially, tocommission the services across England and Wales,which put in place that through-the-gate provisionfor everybody released from custody, including thoseserving short custodial sentences, as the Minister setout, so that for the first time they will receive that
Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 6126 March 2013 Helen Grant MP, Ian Porée and Michael Spurrsupport. At the moment, many do not receive thatthrough-the-gate provision. Of course, in order to takeon board that additional scope of services with thegroup of offenders who currently do not receive theseservices, we will need to transform the whole systemso that it can provide these services. Part of that wouldbe to open up the provision to a much broader rangeof providers. It is entirely conceivable—the Ministerused this example earlier—that a new rehabilitationservices provider starting work in custody would joinup provision through to something like the women’scommunity centres, because it would be a very logicalsupport model to work with someone on the insideas well as post-release. The ambition of that is toreduce reoffending. If that is successful, year-on-yearreductions in reoffending should reduce the demandwithin the system.Q299 Mr Llwyd: I go back to the Corston report.How would you respond to the view held by theLucy Faithfull Foundation that the Corston report hasresulted in too much emphasis on women who havenot committed serious offences? If you agree, what doyou plan to do to address this?Helen Grant: At whom are you directing the question?Would you like something from all of us?Mr Llwyd: Whoever wants to shoot back.Michael Spurr: I do not think it is fair to say that thereview led to an over-emphasis and focus on womenwith less serious offences. The vast majority of thepopulation in women’s prisons—as, indeed, in maleprisons—are serving relatively short sentences andwill be released, so it is not unreasonable that there hasbeen a specific focus on that group of offenders, manyof whom are repeat offending and, therefore, cause alot of damage and difficulty for the public. It is rightthat we would do that.We have been looking to develop better interventionsfor individuals in the higher-risk group of women.In fact, very early on, in answer to Mr McDonald’squestion about segmentation, I mentioned the CAREprogramme, which is a very specific programme aimedat women with complex needs who have committedserious violent offences. That was not there beforeand has been developed specifically to address someof those complex needs. We have closed the women’sunit in Durham prison that held category A women butprovided very little for any of those high-risk offenders.We have developed an alternative set of arrangements,including what we now call restricted status. We havea personality disorder unit for women in Low Newtonprison, called the Primrose unit. We have a therapeuticcommunity provision for high-needs, high-risk womenin Send prison. We are working to develop further thepersonality disorder work on which we are working inpartnership with the Department of Health. That willextend provision into Foston Hall and, as a progressionunit, into Drake Hall prison, and provide provisionin the community in Crowley House, which is anapproved premises in Birmingham. I do not think it isfair to say that we have neglected the high-risk women.I think we now have a range of interventions that aremuch better for those women than was the case in2007.Helen Grant: There is the embedding of gender-specificstandards. For example, every woman, whether she ishigh risk or low risk, is offered a pregnancy test whenshe enters prison. That is a small example, but thereare many examples of where Jean Corston’s report hasdone an enormous amount of good right across thepiece in terms of offending and the level of offending.Q300 Mr Llwyd: I move on to anotherrecommendation of the Corston report, which is theprovision for foreign national prisoners. Do you planto devise a distinct strategy for these women, as therecommendation suggests?Helen Grant: We have done quite a lot on this; Iknow Michael will have something to say as well.We recognise that foreign national prisoners carryadditional burdens that may be connected withlanguage, culture or feelings of isolation. Those arehuge, particularly when you are in prison. I knowthat NOMS—I think this is where Michael will saysome more—works very closely with charities thatsupport female foreign national offenders, both in thecommunity and while they are in prison serving theirsentences. In addition to that, the Government want tomake greater use of prisoner transfer arrangements,which will enable foreign national prisoners to bemoved from the prison here to their own country,where, of course, they can be supported by friends,family and children. Again, that will be a big part ofthe rehabilitation process. A number of allowances arealso made with regard to extended visits, the amountof money that can sometimes be used on telephonecalls and sometimes—not all the time—use of officialphone lines and phones in offices to make calls abroad.It is a special area, and we take it very seriously indeed.Q301 Mr Llwyd: Mr Spurr, did you want to saysomething?Michael Spurr: Not really, other than that I think thework we are doing with UKBA is also important toidentify. Part of the strategy is to have clarity for allforeign national offenders, men or women, about theirstatus, which is a huge issue early on in the sentence,and then to work to that position, particularly if itwill mean removal to their home countries. We needto identify what that means and to work through itwith them. That is the only point I would add to theMinister’s answer.Q302 Mr Llwyd: I will make what to some peoplemight be a strange, tangential point, but to me it is not.In Styal yesterday, there was a big banner outside onebuilding on which the word “Welcome” was displayedin every language on earth, apart from Welsh. I wonderwhy.Helen Grant: Did you alert them to that fact?Q303 Mr Llwyd: I did alert them to it. Bearing inmind that there are Welsh prisoners there, I thought itwas rather strange, but that is by the by. This is the finalquestion from me. What do you believe is requiredto better support women’s relationships with theirchildren? This is probably for the Minister.Helen Grant: Women retaining, maintaining andhaving enduring relationships with their children is
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