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

Justice Committee: Evidence Ev 976. In terms of progress, the available data show some positive trends:— Historically female prisoners accounted for more than half of self-harm incidents but this is nolonger the case: between 2010 and 2011, self-harm incidents involving female prisonersdecreased by 30% compared to a 10% increase for incidents with male prisoners.— While the rate of female individuals self-harming remained constant between 2010 and 2011(at 294 self-harmers per 1,000 female prisoners), the average number of incidents per femaleprisoner fell from 10.1 to 7.1, the lowest since 2004.— While every death is a tragedy that has profound consequences, there has been a reduction inthe number of women’s self-inflicted deaths in prison in recent years; from a peak of 14 in2003 to two in 2011.— Women are doing slightly better than men in terms of outcomes for community sentences: in2011, 58% of community orders for women ran full course, compared to 54% for men; and,for both sexes, 11% of community orders were terminated early for good progress.7. The proportion of women reoffending, those receiving community sentences, and those in prison hasstabilised:— Between 2006 and 2010, the proportion of all female offenders who re-offended within oneyear of release from custody or receiving a court order or caution, reprimand, warning or testedpositive for opiates or cocaine was between 18% and 19%. In the same period, the proportionof all male offenders who re-offended within one year was between 28% and 29%.— Women represented 15% of all offenders supervised by the Probation Service on communityorders in 2011. This proportion has been stable since 2007.— The proportion of females in the overall prison population has been stable at 5% since 2007.8. We recognise that more needs to be done to reduce reoffending and will take this forward as part of theGovernment’s approach to the Rehabilitation Revolution delivering a Rehabilitation Revolution in how wetackle reoffending.The nature and effectiveness of Ministry of Justice governance structures for women’s offending9. Strong leadership for female offenders is provided by Helen Grant, as Minister for Women in the CriminalJustice System, who is actively supported by Lord McNally and Jeremy Wright (Minister for Prisons andRehabilitation).10. At official level there are dedicated teams who work closely on the female offenders brief in both MoJand the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) under the leadership of the Director for Sentencingand Rehabilitation and the Chief Executive for NOMS.11. Within NOMS, the Director of Commissioning and Commercial has overall responsibility forcommissioning offender services for men and women in custody and the community, which is informed byspecialist commissioners responsible for a wide range of women’s services. A team in NOMS providesevidence-based strategic advice and guidance to ensure commissioning activities are outcome-focused,appropriately targeted and delivered to the required standard to ensure offending behaviour and needs areaddressed.12. In 2013–14, local Probation Trusts will be responsible for the commissioning of services for femaleoffenders, based on local needs. These services will be monitored under an “assurance model” of contractmanagement by NOMS to ensure that Probation Trusts are providing good quality services to female offenders.We will publish further information shortly about our plans for changes to the commissioning of probationservices. We recognise, as set out in the NOMS Commissioning Intentions document, that the there are aparticular set of needs and priorities which are relevant to services for female offenders and we will ensurethese are addressed within our overall approach.The extent to which work to address the multiple and complex needs of women offenders is integrated acrossGovernment13. We work in partnership with other Government Departments, including the Departments for Health,Work & Pensions, and Communities & Local Government, and the Home Office, to deliver our workplan forfemale offenders. Although focused on women in the criminal justice system, since the workplan addressesfactors associated with women’s offending such as mental health and substance misuse, abuse andhomelessness, it could benefit women who may be at risk of offending.14. There is strong cross-Government responsibility for addressing these issues. Justice Ministers provideeffective leadership through frequent discussions with other Ministerial colleagues on women’s offending aspart of the Government’s rehabilitation reforms. Ministers are members of a number of inter-ministerial groupsthat support this work, including violence against women and girls, homelessness and human trafficking. Thisleadership is supported by Helen Grant’s joint role as Minister for Equalities.