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

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Women offenders: after the Corston Report 2556. The PCA reported that NOMS decided to take a targeted approach to achievereductions in the use of custody and focused resources on three larger probation areaswhere it was considered most effect could be gained in closing a women’s prison. The aimof this work was to: raise the profile of women offenders with local criminal justice boards;promote the understanding of magistrates and sentencers of the complex needs of women;and draw their attention to the sentencing options open to them. 109 The PCA believed thatthis would have been more effective had Trusts been better consulted and engaged in thisendeavour.57. Val Castell of the Magistrates’ Association told us that magistrates were approachingthe sentencing of women differently, particularly in areas with intensive alternative tocustody schemes, but in the absence of such schemes there remained limited options:“We tend to approach sentencing in quite a linear way, and our sentencingguidelines tend to lead us down this route. It’s low-level risk; it’s final discharge; it’smedium-level; it’s community sentence; it’s over the custody threshold. If you havecome to the point in the sentencing guidelines where it says, "This offence is soserious, you’re over the custody threshold," then, when looking for communityalternatives, you tend to be looking for something that is more robust than astandard community option. By and large, even where women’s sentences exist, if allthey are offering is a standard community option, that still does not really give us allthe options that we need to look at custodial alternatives.” 110Frances Crook suggested that magistrates sometimes over-sentence women to veryonerous conditions in community sentences in an effort to help sort out their lives. 111When we questioned the Acting HM Chief Inspector of Probation, Liz Calderbank, aboutwhether there was any evidence to support this she did not believe that there was. Sheexplained: “in all the cases that we looked at where we thought that the sentence appearedon the face of it to be somewhat harsh, when we explored the case back…we found verygood reasons for why the sentence had been imposed.” 112 Nevertheless, we heard examplesof women being sent to prison for minor crimes including not paying council tax and notsending children to school; another troubling example was of a self-harmer for whom therewas no alternative to custody as the local authority was unable to find suitable, safe,accommodation for her. 11358. Helen Grant described it as a “widely held perception” that many women in prison arethere for breach of a probation order or a licence for relatively minor offences, but shenoted that in 2009 13% of women received into prison on immediate custodial sentenceswere there for breach of a court order, compared with 12% of men.” 114 Nevertheless, thePCA and individual trusts believed that too many women still end up in custody as a resultof breach action, for offences that would not, of themselves, have attracted a custodial109 Ev 120110 Q 199111 Q 151112 Q 210113 Ev w94, Ev w96114 Q 294
26 Women offenders: after the Corston Reportsentence. 115 The Acting HM Chief Inspector of Probation supported this: “If you look atthe bulk of the women offenders subject to probation, although their level of breach issimilar to that of their male counterparts, they will generally have committed a much lowerlevel of offence than the men. You would not expect them to be receiving the same level ofcustodial sentence on breach or sentences being breached at the same rate.” 116 A significantproportion (60%) of women on remand do not subsequently receive a custodial sentence,and a further proportion are sentenced to fewer than six months. 11759. Nick Hardwick, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, considered that the central strategiccriticisms made in the Corston Report remained valid: “The fundamental things thatCorston talked about, it seems to me, are that you have women in prison who probablyshould not be there in the first place, and that those who are there are in prisons that aretoo big and in the wrong place, and that is because there has not been the drive from thecentre to sort that out.” 118 Clinks, which supports, represents and campaigns for voluntaryand community sector organisations working with offenders, agreed that many of the“damaging effects” identified by Corston—for example, the disproportionately harmfulimpact of prison on women and their children and the futility of short custodialsentences—remain ingrained in the system. 11960. Baroness Corston was of the view that public sentiment might be supportive of fewerwomen in prison, as indicated by a SmartJustice poll regarding best practice with womenwho had committed low level offences and the response to a BBC programme on HMPStyal. 120 The likelihood of widespread support for reducing the use of custody was apparentin our evidence. We heard that the National Council of Women recently passed aunanimous resolution calling on the Government to introduce a rigorous strategy toreform women’s justice, prioritising community based solutions. In December 2011 theSoroptimist International UK Programme Action Committee took the decision to lobby toreduce women’s imprisonment. The Women’s Institute leads a campaign to promote thediversion into appropriate treatment of people with mental health problems and learningdisabilities in the criminal justice system. These sentiments were echoed in evidence wereceived from two groups of Quakers and the Penal Affairs Panel of the Unitarians. 121 Arecent ICM poll showed that 80% of those surveyed strongly agreed that local women’scentres where women address the root causes of their crime and do compulsory work inthe community to payback should be available. 122 Professor Gelsthorpe proposed that apublic opinion survey should inform the development of strategic priorities. 123115 Ev 129, Ev w99, Ev w101116 Q 210117 Ev w101, Ev w57118 Q 226. See also Ev 66119 Ev 89, Ev 80120 Q 18121 Ev w4, Ev w60, Ev w77. See also Ev w70122 Ev 103123 Ev w104
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