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

Women offenders: after the Corston Report 23regular reporting to Parliament had been crucial to the progress that had been made underthe previous Government. 103 The Prison Reform Trust specifically called for us to reviewprogress on an annual basis. 104 Helen Grant agreed to keep us informed of therecommendations of the Advisory Board. 10549. We do not consider that the Advisory Board without wider ministerial involvementwill constitute a sufficient mechanism for high level cross-departmental governancearrangements of the sort that Baroness Corston initially proposed, and advocated bymany of our witnesses. It is not likely to have the authority to bring about integratedstrategy and co-ordinated service provision. Most Government departments have acontribution to make to the work of the new Advisory Board, but we consider that at aminimum there must be representation from the Department of Health, Departmentof Communities and Local Government, Home Office, the Department for Educationand the Department of Work and Pensions. We welcome the fact that the first three ofthese are full members of the Board but as poverty is an important dimension inwomen’s offending we consider that the Department for Work and Pensions shouldalso be required to participate as a matter of course rather than on an ad hoc basis. Thesame status should be afforded to the Department for Education, which does not atpresent have even a peripheral role, in order to address the question of effectivelyidentifying girls at risk of offending. It is only with robust high-level support thatcollaboration between departmental officials on the Advisory Board will be effective.We would like to see women offenders, and those at risk of offending, become astanding item on the agenda of the Inter-Ministerial Group on Equality as anadditional means of facilitating collective responsibility for these matters.50. There was limited external input into the Government’s development of its strategicpriorities. It is regrettable that this was the case and this, together with the uncertaintyabout the membership of the Advisory Board, adds to the appearance that the prioritieswere produced in haste with insufficient thought. This is manifested in the absence of anydetail about how the Government intends to measure success towards meeting its strategicpriorities. The Advisory Board should devise appropriate measures of success inrelation to each of the strategic priorities and publish regularly progress against them,alongside an account of its own work in furthering the priorities. Accountability shouldlie not just with the Minister with responsibility for women offenders but should bebuilt into relevant roles within other government departments and local authorities. Itis not possible for the Ministry of Justice alone to address the wide range of problemsthat contribute to female offending. There must be much more explicit recognition,including by the Minister herself, of the need to focus as much on those women andgirls on the periphery as those who are already involved in the system.51. Over the next four chapters we consider the substance of the Government’s strategicpriorities. It should be noted that all our written and oral evidence on these matters, withthe exception of the oral evidence session with Helen Grant and her officials, was takenprior to the publication of the Government’s strategic priorities.103 Q 9104 Ev 103105 Qq 263–264