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

20 Women offenders: after the Corston Reportwomen’s offending, or on consistently informing broader policy initiatives within MoJand NOMS. For too long, while the needs of female offenders have been recognised asdifferent from those of males, the criminal justice system generally and the NationalOffender Management Service in particular have struggled to reflect these differencesfully in the services it provides. A key lesson still to be learnt is that tackling women’soffending is not just a matter for the justice system.Subsequent reports42. Efforts have been made to maintain the prominence of the needs of women offendersand to advance the Corston Report’s recommendations in subsequent reports. Inparticular, an All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System (the APPG)was established in 2009, chaired by Baroness Corston, which published a follow-up reportWomen in the penal system: Second report on Women with particular vulnerabilities in thecriminal justice system in 2011 and recently produced two briefing papers on Girls in thePenal System, a group not explicitly considered in the original report. 87 The Prison ReformTrust has also revisited the issues several times, including through the independentWomen’s Justice Taskforce, which reported in 2011, and the recent establishment of athree year strategic programme to reduce women’s imprisonment. 8843. This Committee’s predecessor made the following assessment of the previousGovernment’s progress in January 2010:“We are disappointed with the Government’s slow progress in implementing BaronessCorston’s recommendations for vulnerable women offenders, which it accepted inDecember 2007. We are concerned that the limited additional funding that has beencommitted to implementing the recommendations has been partially diverted to existingprojects which have been unable to find sustainable funding. This is symptomatic offundamental problems in funding initiatives which would reduce the use of prison.” 89The Government responded that it had made “substantial progress” in implementing therecommendations and rejected the assertion that progress had been slow, citing an‘already’ promising reduction in the women’s prison population and an ongoingcommitment to reducing the women’s prison estate by 400 places by March 2012. 90The Government’s strategic priorities44. On 22nd March 2013 the Ministry of Justice published its Strategic objectives for femaleoffenders, which stated the following four key priorities:1. Ensuring the provision of credible, robust sentencing options in the communitythat will enable female offenders to be punished and rehabilitated in thecommunity where appropriate. We are committed to ensuring all community87 Ev 11488 Ev 10389 Justice Committee, First Report of Session 2009–10, Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment, HC 94–I para 15990 Ministry of Justice, Government response to the Justice Committee’s First Report of Session 2009–10, Cutting crime:the case for justice reinvestment, Cm 7819, para 24