Welcoming the report by Baroness Jean Corston, Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
The Corston review gives government the chance at long last to join up its social policy with its criminal justice policy. Most women in prison have committed petty offences. Very many have been victims of serious crime and sustained abuse. A new commission for women, with a sensible blueprint for reform across government departments, will largely do away with big prisons that operate as social dustbins for vulnerable women and introduce instead a network of small units and effective local services coupled with proper supervision and support. Many women who offend will have their first real opportunity to beat drugs, drink, mental illness and crime and to take responsibility for their lives, and those of their children, and most will take it.
Notes:
Juliet Lyon was an independent member of Baroness Corston’s review group.
Justice for vulnerable women
(updated from paper presented by Juliet Lyon to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sex Equality chaired by Julie Morgan MP on 20th Feb 2007)
(% = of women’s prison population unless stated - no. 4,329 on 02.03.07)
Both victims (of serious crime) and perpetrators (of petty persistent crime)
64% serve 6 mths or less, the majority for non-violent offences, theft, fraud and drug related crime.
- Domestic violence (over half) and sexual abuse (1:3)
- Family breakdown, early lone motherhood and care history(quarter)
- Poverty and debt (in 1850s around 4,500 women in prison for same reasons)
- Self-harm & mental illness(37% attempted suicide before prison, 5 times more likely to injure selves in prison than men, after prison 36 times more likely to commit suicide than gen. women’s pop. 70% suffer 2 or more mental disorders)
- Drug (55% test positive for class A on arrival) and alcohol misuse(2:5)
Public service failure and poor prison outcomes (65% recon rate, 1:3 lose homes)
During the two and half years of my incarceration I was to discover the depths of despair one can fall into, believing I was losing my mind, believing I was dead, believing I was buried alive, believing I would never be free. I learnt about self- harm, physically and emotionally, I learnt how to survive, yet at the same time how it feels to want to die every day….. Prison is not a place for the mentally ill, and too many women are there already that should not be. Woman after prison.
Sentencing
- Mitigating factors (see above plus 1:3 no pre-convictions 2 times the figure for men)
- Social outcomes and double punishment (17,700 children separated, 65% for first time, from mother by imprisonment. Just 5% stay in own homes)
- Proportionality. Evidence of harsher sentencing
- Drug importation sentences no deterrent for foreign nationals (22% are drug mules serving disproportionate terms - more desperate women will do same)
- Misuse of custodial remand (2:3 receptions, 1:5 acquitted, fewer than half receive custody after av. 39 days, most often used for NFA, own protect. or psych. assess. 2004 of 12,554 women imprisoned, 7,978 remanded)
- Limited options and need for: pre-court and court diversion (patchy or non-existent and no sign of promised gov. review)
Gender specific community penalties (lack crit. by chief inspect. probation)
Solutions but no, or slow, implementation
- Government strategy on women offenders 2001: The best way to reduce women’s offending it is to improve women’s access to work; to improve women’s mental health services; to tackle drug abuse by women; to improve family ties and to improve the life chances of young women at school and in the community.
- Spending review commitment 2004: government will 'pilot radical new approaches to meet the specific needs of women offenders, to tackle the causes of crime and re-offending among this group and reduce the need for custody'.
- Together women programme
- Corston review: sweeping change? March. 2007
Closing gap between policy and practice
- Network of supervision and support centres incl. opps for women to take responsibility for own lives
- Women only bail provision and tagging instead of custody
- Family support, closeness to home, mentoring, multi-disciplinary, local gov and NGO input
- Cross-departmental body to commission and monitor services for vulnerable women – without this women as 6% prison pop never a priority
Public and parliamentary support
- Weight of research evidence – PRT: Wedderburn inquiry into women’s imprisonment, Troubled Inside: responding to the mental health needs of women in prison, Lacking Conviction: overuse of remand for women plus research by Fawcett, Women in Prison, NACRO, Hibiscus and Home Office
- Success of Asha, Calderdale and centre 218 in Glasgow – evaluations available
- SmartJustice for women-campaign to promote community solutions:
EDM signed by 87 MPs. All party groups on sex equality & penal affairs support
- Alliance of national women’s organisations in support of alternatives to custody for women includes National Council of Women, Soroptimists, Townswomen’s Guild, Catholic Society of Women, WI.
- Favourable press response-broadcast media, tabloids and broadsheets, special features in Hello, the WI Home and Country magazine, Red, Woman’s Own etc.
- SmartJustice public opinion poll by ICM with 1006 respondents published 6 March. Very strong support for radical new approach to women who offend. Over two in three (67%) said prison was not likely to reduce offending and almost three quarters (73%) did not think mothers of young children who commit non violent crime should be locked up. Instead there was overwhelming support (86%) for community alternatives to prison – for example, centres where women are sent to address the causes of their crimes whilst also having to do compulsory work in the community.
It is clear to me—and, I am sure, to many in the House—that there are people in our prisons who should not be there. They range from foreign nationals to vulnerable women to those for whom mental health treatment would be more appropriate
John Reid, Home Secretary, Hansard, 20/07/06, column 473
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