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

Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 795.2 High levels of self harm a staggering 12,663 incidents of self harm were reported within the femaleprison estate in 2010 (47% of self harm incidents in prison are inflicted by women, despite women being just5% of the prison population) further evidences its unsuitability. We wish to remind the committee that it wasthe 6 deaths in HMP Styal that lead to the commissioning of The Corston Report.5.3 We draw the committee’s attention to the evidence provided within the recent Northern Ireland andScottish reviews of current women’s estates, particularly their recommendations to address the very specificneeds of women offenders including the objective for women prisoners to be place in small units close to home.5.4 Categorisation is currently a gendered issue rather than a security requirement. The female estate consistsof only Open and Closed spaces, unlike the male estate. Prison Service Instruction 39/2011 sets out theprinciples that determine the categorisation and re-categorisation of women prisoners, apart from the very fewwomen prisoners who are Category A or Restricted Status, and are categorised and reviewed by NOMSHeadquarters .Pursuant to PSI 39/2011:The purpose of categorisation is to assess the risks posed by a prisoner in terms of likelihood ofescape or abscond; the risk of harm to the public in the event of an escape or abscond; Any controlissues that impact on the security and good order of the prison and the safety of those within it ii60%, approximately 2496 of women in prison are serving short sentences and pose no risk to society,therefore they should be held within open conditions—the current estate has 2 Open prisons with acombined operating capacity of 228, were women are frequently backstage to closed conditions forpeer informed allegations rather than concrete evidence.5.5 The lack of women specific programmes, the lack of Open spaces together with a lack of approvedpremises (discussed below), and The Parole Board under continued strain all contribute to creating a bottleneckto women on indeterminate sentences leaving prison.This is evidenced by the difficulties faced by indefinite sentenced female prisoners moving through andexiting the custodial prison system. As an example 130 women are sentenced under IPP, 90 of whom are overtariff. Where gender specific offender management programmes exist, places are limited and in high demand,resulting in women being unable to complete their sentence plan due to lack of access rather than desire tochange, resulting in longer time spent in custody.The CARE Programme, the only gender specific offender behaviour programme running within the prisonsystem is currently only commissioned in one establishment HMP Foston Hall. This is of concern, given thenumber of women who need to complete the CARE programme as part of their sentence plan, effectivelydiminishing their chances of release. The Primrose Project at HMP Low Newton and the DemocraticTherapeutic Community at HMP Send are similarly oversubscribed.6. Community Provision6.1 Availability of women-specific community sentences and the development of women-specific conditionalcautioning, co-location and other means of partnership working with women’s support services to overcomethe disadvantages women face in gender-neutral community sentences is still geographically limited, despitethe increase in these services.6.2 There has been an expansion of the network of women’s centres; this began under the previousgovernment. This government have continued funding most of the services (at a reduced level). In the2013–2014 financial year funding for these services will be managed locally, there is no clear strategic nationalplan and it is clear that this government’s emphasis on localisation means that it is unwilling to require regionsto undertake women-specific work or ringfence any funding for this work despite the clearly identified needfor a central driver for this agenda.6.3 Women in Prison has delivered two MOJ/NOMS funded diversion projects and continues to deliver avery successful diversion project (WomenMATTA) in partnership with the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester.Evaluations conducted on both funded projects provided evidence of financial benefit, and success in terms ofoutcomes for the women and partnership work.“In summary the notional value of the two year project (based on an analysis of 62 cases andidentifying potential benefits from 20 cases) equates to c£1.8 million. The actual cost of projectbased on its full two year expenditure was c£497k.Therefore the net benefit of the project (subjectto validation) would be c£1.3 million”. 126.4 Approved premises—Some additional bed spaces have been created but there are still far too few forwomen. Currently there are six women-only approved premises, with a total of 112 bed spaces; the locationsdo not include London or Manchester where some of the highest female offending rates are in England. Thislack of approved premises not only increases the number of women that are held on remand, it also adds tothe bottleneck within prisons with women with no suitable address unable to obtain HDC.12 Prisoner Advice Service, Information Sheet Categorisation of women prisoners