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

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Women offenders: after the Corston Report 79209. The narrow view taken to funding women’s community projects directly throughprobation trusts is perhaps indicative of intrinsic structural problems in the MoJ andNOMS being the locus for making decisions about the provision of services to women withparticular vulnerabilities. Liz Hogarth described the difficulties she saw inherent in NOMStaking the lead on the Corston agenda:“The difficulty for NOMS, though, is that their remit is offenders. Therefore, it wasnot within their remit to take on board and understand the agenda where we weretrying to work with [Baroness Corston’s] approach, which was to try and cut offwomen at risk of offending getting sucked into the criminal justice system. Then andnow, there are still difficulties around that for them because it is not within theirnormal day-to-day work.” 437210. Baroness Corston proposed in her report that the lead responsibility for theMinisterial Group on women who offend or are at risk of offending should transfer to theDCLG Minister so as to align priorities to the community agenda, but the Ministry ofJustice is still very much at the helm. Helen Grant acknowledged the need to take a broaderapproach to addressing the root causes of offending but still appeared to take a relativelynarrow interpretation of this, referring for example to some of these causes being drug andalcohol use itself, rather than the underlying causes of substance misuse, although she didrefer to the damage caused by domestic violence. 438Political courage211. Wish proposed that the Ministry of Justice should improve its work to communicatethe current situation of women offenders, including typical offences, their backgroundsand the situation they face on release including homelessness, unemployment, isolationand loss of custody of their children. 439212. Baroness Corston intended that her agenda for reform should stretch beyondcriminal justice to also benefit women with multiple vulnerabilities in the community,and their children. We welcome the Government’s stated support for a ‘whole system’approach, but there is little to signal a radical shift in the Government's thinking aboutwhat this means. All the signs are that in practice it will prove to be a partial andfragmented approach. Careful investment in women’s services has the potential to makesignificant ‘whole system’ improvement yet funding options appear unlikely to beavailable for that purpose. We believe a ‘whole system’ approach should enable suchservices, and others, to provide earlier intervention to address the inter-generationalnature of offending, and to stem the flow of girls and women into the criminal justicesystem. That system is not equipped to tackle the multiple problems that contribute towomen’s offending and in many cases, compounds rather than solves issues, increasinga woman’s chance that she will end up in custody. Breaking the link between womenwith mental health problems and the criminal justice system must also be a keypriority.437 Q 3438 Q 253439 Ev w12
80 Women offenders: after the Corston Report213. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice, Women and Equalities haslead responsibility for progress both for women offenders and for those at risk ofoffending. This work will require strong backing from Ministers at the highest levelsacross Government. The efficacy of existing governance arrangements, along with thechanges we recommended earlier in our report and the progress made against theGovernment’s strategic priorities, should be reviewed after one year and should be usedto inform a consideration of whether responsibility for driving the strategic approachshould transfer to the Department for Communities and Local Government asBaroness Corston originally intended.
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