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

52 Women offenders: after the Corston Reportthat women’s provision can be more costly to develop and deliver.” 261 Ian Porée assured usthat this could be mitigated by setting “very specific commissioning priorities, focused onthe needs of women” so that providers will have to demonstrate that what they offer forwomen offenders is credible and is likely to meet the objectives of reducing reoffending. 262130. The issue of perverse incentives arising from a payments by results system may bea particular problem for ensuring that appropriate provision is made for womenoffenders as they are often classified for probation purposes as presenting a lower riskof reoffending or harm 263 but have a higher level of need, requiring more intensive, andcostly, intervention.Future funding arrangements for women’s centres131. Several witnesses feared that the needs of women would be lost in the proposed newfunding arrangements, particularly as the evidence of the effectiveness of women’s centreswas only just emerging and as economies of scale might mean that women would be“lumped in with men”. They also expressed concerns about the model of nationalcommissioning underpinning the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, and the resultingloss of ring-fenced funding for women’s services, which may prove too restrictive to benefitthe centres. 264 Liz Calderbank believed that the new commissioning arrangements couldrepresent “[...] either a huge opportunity or a tremendous threat, and a lot of the outcomewill depend on how the arrangements are taken forward, and on whether thecommissioning arrangements take account of the demands of working with what areeffectively minority groups within the criminal justice system and the need to resourcethose effectively and ensure that they are sustainable.” 265132. Women’s Breakout argued that it was too soon for women’s community services to besubject to the open market and called for grant funding to continue for a further threeyears. 266 Jackie Russell, the organisation’s Director, highlighted that the motivations ofthose providing women’s centres may not be in step with the new commissioningarrangements:“They take [money for delivering services] because they are concerned about thewoman. They are working there because they are concerned about getting thatwoman into employment, not about saying they are providing a service that takessomebody else’s outputs and claims the profit. There is a real need to understand themotivation behind voluntary sector organisations and why they behave in a way thatis not necessarily commercial, because by behaving commercially they have to walkaway. That is what PBR is doing.” 267261 Ev w63262 Q 312263 Statistics on women in the criminal justice system264 Q 82 [Mr Kilgarriff], Q 160 [Ms Lyon], Q 162 [Ms Crook]265 Q 216–Q223266 Ev 69267 Q 128