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

Women offenders: after the Corston Report 83and target resources accordingly—is another example where progress has been fartoo slow. We welcome NOMS’ intention to accelerate work on the specific needs ofwomen, but we are extremely disappointed that over six years after the CorstonReport there is still not sufficient evidence about what those needs are, or how best toaddress them. Before embarking on any new policy development, NOMS mustconsider gender as a matter of course rather than seeking to reduce any detrimentalimpact on women of the general approach after the event; in many respects efforts toaddress the distinct needs of women are still lagging behind developments for men.(Paragraph 80)Sentencing guidelines8. We do not consider that substantive changes to the overall sentencing frameworkwould be helpful at this time and recommend that emphasis is placed on ensuring agreater consistency of provision to the courts to enable them to sentence from arange of options specifically appropriate to women, including robust alternatives tocustody. More attention must be paid to the potential impact of imprisonment ondependent children both during the sentencing process, and once a parent, whetherfemale or male, has been imprisoned. These issues should be addressed as a priorityby the Advisory Board, which could usefully both examine whether lessons can belearnt from international practice on taking child welfare into account during thesentencing process, and ascertain how the children of prisoners could be betteridentified and relevant services, including schools, subsequently notified. Wewelcome the Sentencing Council’s inclusion of primary child caring responsibilitiesas a mitigating factor in sentencing guidelines and we would appreciate an updatefrom the Council about the extent to which this factor is taken into account insentencing decisions. Similarly we would like to be kept informed about the impacton sentencing of introducing the mitigating factor on vulnerability to exploitation inthe drug offences guideline. (Paragraph 87)9. Generic community provision for women offers a route for diverting vulnerablewomen from crime and tackling the root causes of offending. Significant steps havebeen taken towards achieving Baroness Corston’s vision for a network of suchprovision, and there are promising signs that this seems to have begun to have apositive impact on trends in women’s imprisonment, albeit at a disappointingly slowpace. Over half of those women sentenced to custody still receive short sentences.There appear to be several explanations for this: appropriate community provisionremains unavailable; the court perhaps did not know there was adequate provisionavailable; or the court was not confident that the community provision wasappropriate or acceptable to wider public opinion. This agenda has not progressed ata sufficiently fast pace since 2007, and we have not found evidence of the systematicchange in approach that Baroness Corston advocated. It is not acceptable forineffective prison sentences or fines to be imposed because of a lack of provision forappropriately challenging community sentences and facilities. Sentencers must befully informed about the range of community provision available for women, itseffectiveness in preventing offending, and the ineffectiveness of short custodialsentences for women who have not committed offences so serious as to require acustodial sentence. (Paragraph 88)