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

Women offenders: after the Corston Report 61the women’s prison population as a given, particularly as the implementation of theremand reforms under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act2012 may create some headroom in the system to enable a different approach to betaken with a smaller number of women.Priorities for the review155. Nick Hardwick noted “tangible improvements” in conditions for women in custodysince Baroness Corston reported. This is most strikingly evident in the reduction inincidents of self-harm: self-harm among women now makes up 30% of all self-harmincidents, whereas it used to be 50%; the number of self-inflicted deaths has also fallen;nevertheless self-harm remains high and distress and mental health problems are clearlyevident in each prison he visits. 313 Eoin McLennan Murray similarly reflected that prisongovernors had made “good progress” in implementing those recommendations that fellwithin their remit, but suggested that this is “dwarfed by the magnitude of the changesneeded to transform custody for women in this country.” 314 In this section we highlightsome of the areas in which our witnesses believed such transformation was required.Developing regimes to meet women’s needs156. NOMS states that it is “fully committed to ensuring that women prisoners are held inconditions and within regimes that meet their gender-specific needs and which facilitatetheir successful resettlement.” Our evidence suggests that it will need to take great strides torealise this commitment.Family friendly custodial regimes?157. The maintenance of family relationships is a supportive factor in reducing reoffending,yet our evidence indicates strongly that the women’s custodial estate and prisonregimes are failing to support women’s relationships with their children. 315 Three of thewomen ex-prisoners we spoke to summarised the difficulties of maintaining familyrelationships in prison:“I have certainly known of women who I’ve been in prison with who’ve had smallchildren, and in the visiting area they can’t get off their seat; so they can’t get downand hug their children. It’s very difficult to have any physical contact with them. It’svery much down to the wider family to bring the children to the prison to see themother. It’s very difficult.”“Men tend not to be as supportive to women. Women tend to kind of visit men morethan men visit women.”“Also, there’s the distance. I have a son, and [...] it was very few and far between withthe visits. Even now, to this day, my son is with my brother. I am quite fortunate, but313 Q 226314 Ibid.315 See for example Ev w96