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

Women offenders: after the Corston Report 57commissioning for women’s services, for example, focused on reducing both women’soffending and the number of women entering custody. 291 The potential role of PCCs incommissioning women’s centres and reducing use of custody was also raised. 292145. Our predecessor Committee proposed in its report Cutting crime: the case for justicereinvestment that the Government should analyse the existing flow of resources at nationallevel including total spending across central departments, for example on health,education, social welfare and criminal justice, for key groups of offenders and that suchanalysis should inform the extension of justice reinvestment approaches. These involvechannelling resources on a geographically-targeted basis to reduce the crimes which bringpeople into the criminal justice system and into prison in particular—prioritising women,among others. Several of our witnesses, including CIFC, Prison Reform Trust, and Clinks,argued that the justice reinvestment approaches that were advocated in that report wouldprovide alternative mechanisms to reform the system which could serve a number ofpurposes as well as reducing reoffending, including: promoting local accountability forreducing the use of custody and diverting girls and women from the criminal justicesystem; releasing resources from the ‘crisis’ end of the system; reinforcing the equality dutywith financial incentives; and facilitating the co-commissioning of an integrated set ofcommunity interventions aimed at responding to vulnerabilities and minimising harm. 293146. As we noted above, the narrow focus on reoffending rates fails to capture the broadersocial benefits of women’s community services. The Nelson Trust, which manages the ISIScentre in Gloucester, lamented a lack of recognition in public sector commissioning andfunding processes of these benefits and the substantial savings achieved to public servicesby their activities, and said this threatened the sustainability of services. 294 Revolving DoorsAgency conducted research for CIFC which identified the savings to a range ofdepartments and public bodies, and showed how an intervention from a service like ISIS,particularly for a woman with parental responsibilities, can achieve savings over and abovethe costs of imprisonment. 295 Such an approach would enable a broader evaluation of costsavings. Joy Doal of Anawim illustrated the broader social value of their involvement withwomen offenders:“We get shedloads of referrals from social services, and no money from social services.Yet let me give you one example of one family. We have a project called Reunite,which is about helping women when they come out of prison. We have a partnershipwith Midland Heart, which is a social landlord. When a woman comes out of prison,the housing provider says it will provide a property large enough for her to have herchildren with her, provided that she can get them back. What normally happens is thatsomeone comes out of prison as a single woman in terms of housing, and she ishoused in a one-bedroom flat. Social services say, "You can’t have your children backbecause you haven’t got a suitable property-and you can’t have a suitable property291 See for example Q 160 [Ms Lyon], Q 216 [Ms Rijnenberg], Ev w1, Ev 63, Ev 120292 See for example Ev w32, Ev w41, Ev w45, Ev 120293 Ev 65, Ev 103, Ev 89294 Ev w32295 Revolving Doors Agency, Counting the Cost: The Financial Impact of Supporting Women with Multiple Needs In theCriminal Justice System, 2011. This estimated that an investment of £18 million a year in women’s centres could savealmost £1bn over five years (p 36).