Investing In Ending Women's Reoffending Would Save Money - And Families
Investing in solutions that will ensure that women and their children are supported to break the vicious cycle of offending, saving millions to the public purse in the process
Today, I am giving evidence to MPs on the Justice Select Committee who are investigating the unprecedented crisis in our prisons and what can be done about it over the next five years.
I am keen to convey the overwhelming evidence showing that prison doesn’t work and that a change of approach is needed. It fails to deliver justice or reduce re-offending and increases trauma and harm to some of our most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens.
Most of the 3,800 women in prison (5% of the overall prison population) have been victims of violence and abuse as children or adults. A third grew up in care. The vast majority are serving short sentences for low level non-violent offences, mostly theft (including shoplifting) – usually linked to mental ill health, substance misuse, poverty and domestic violence. Women are often a family’s primary carer and in nine out of 10 cases when a mother goes to prison her children will have to leave home to live with relatives or go into the care system.
The Government’s new ‘Female Offender Strategy’ reflects some of the blueprint for change set out in Baroness Jean Corston’s ground-breaking 2007 report. The strategy includes a welcome end to plans to build new women’s prisons and a commitment to reduce the women’s prison population by focussing on diversion and community alternatives to custody.
At the heart of delivering the strategy sit a network of local women’s centres providing services to address the root causes of offending – mental ill health, domestic violence, substance misuse, debt and homelessness. In Manchester, such services have helped to reduce imprisonment of women by 35%. A recent evaluation shows that for every £1 spent on women’s centres, £4.68 is saved in other areas of public spending.
The strategy could mark the beginning of a long-term cross-party plan to drastically reduce re-offending, whilst saving millions of pounds spent on counterproductive and harmful prison sentences. If a national network of women’s centres delivering holistic services was funded to demonstrate its effectiveness – a similar model could be rolled out to reduce the male prison population and to tackle high rates of men’s re-offending.
However, the desperate reality for such centres suggests that we are a long way from making this a reality. The disastrous ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ reforms that privatised the probation service and brutal cuts to public services have taken their toll on women’s centres. Those that have managed to remain open endure an unsustainable ‘hand to mouth’ existence, with staff routinely at risk of redundancy and services diminished or threatened with closure.
Aside from funding linked to tackling domestic violence, a pitiful £1.5million has been allocated over two years for running services linked to the government’s new strategy across England and Wales. This compares to £342million additional funding found for private companies delivering the failed reforms to the probation service. It is despite the fact that millions were earmarked to build new women’s prisons, and many more millions will come from the sale of HMP Holloway – the women’s prison in London closed two years ago and now sitting empty on acres of valuable land.
The direct costs of women caught up in the criminal justice system largely fall to the Ministry of Justice and policing, but locking up women with complex needs is also a public health issue. Funding needs to come from across government departments to reflect the causes of, and solutions to, women’s offending. It is an affront to justice that where a woman lives influences whether or not she receives community support or a prison sentence and this postcode lottery needs to be urgently addressed.
Our shamefully high imprisonment rate, the highest in Western Europe, can only be reduced if we increase the confidence of police, the courts and the public in community alternatives to prison that deliver justice and address the causes of crime. Adequately funded women’s centres, offering proven constructive long-term solutions, working collaboratively with police, local authorities, health providers and probation, could have a central role in halving the women’s prison population by the next decade.
For the first time, a cross-party consensus exists that there is a more effective way to administer justice and that the answer to the catastrophe in our prisons, lies in our communities. What is needed now is urgent action: Investing in solutions that will ensure that women and their children are supported to break the vicious cycle of offending, saving millions to the public purse in the process.
Dr Kate Paradine
Also from the Huff Post.
ReplyDeletehttps://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/prison-sentences-women-abolished_uk_5bd88f01e4b07427610c0ddd
Prison sentences of less than a year should be scrapped for women, an influential group of MPs and peers has said.
DeleteAn inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on women in the penal system found that too many women are being sent to prison unnecessarily, and “in spite of overwhelming evidence that prison makes matter worse for them”.
According to the report - which was published on Wednesday - while women tangled up in the justice system are “among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society”, they do not receive the mental health support they need behind bars.
In 2017, there were 8,317 incidents of self-harm among female prisoners, while 37 women have died by suicide in prison since 2007.
Meanwhile, MPs and peers found that imprisoning women is “almost never justifiable from the perspective of public protection”, with just 3% of the female prison population classed as a high or very high risk of harm to others.
Between 2016 and 2017, more women were handed a custodial sentence for theft than violence against the person offences, robbery, sexual offences, fraud, drugs and motoring offences combined.
Of the prison sentences handed out to women last year, two-thirds were less than six months long, while 246 women were sentences to less than two weeks behind bars, the inquiry found.
“Ministers are aware and have spoken publicly about the futility of short prison sentences,” said APPG co-chair Baroness Corston. “Scrapping them for women would save lives and reduce crime.
“Too often, magistrates view custody as the only option when all the evidence indicates that women’s centres provide better support for women and are more effective at reducing offending,” she added.
With experts claiming women are more likely to comply with a community order than men, the APPG said that pumping £18 million into women’s centres each year could save almost £1 billion over five years.
Any future probation model must include ring-fenced funding for specialist women’s services, the report added.
.. if prison sentences of less than a year should be scrapped for women, then they should be scrapped for men too!
Delete#MeToo
I accept there's consequences for non compliance, but I just really can't understand what's hoped to be achieved here.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/poorly-chesterfield-offender-is-jailed-despite-battle-to-beat-drugs-and-keep-his-home-1-9423153
The consequences of being sent back to prison for 14days?
Probable loss of accomodation.
A whole new claim for UC.
Missed healthcare appointments.
All at a large cost to the public purse, and two weeks later back on probation with more problems then a fortnight ago, requiring more attention and need from the supervising officer then before, and I'm sure the person involved will have 'learned their lesson'.
I accept the need for compliance and 'towing the line', but this serves no one.
'Getafix