New approach to women offenders

Work with Offenders looks at the Government’s plans to send fewer women to prison

Somewhat unusually, the MoJ chose the weekend (Saturday 23 January) to make two big announcements about the future of work with women offenders.

Firstly it issued a press release to say that 38 women’s organisations will receive almost £2 million in new funding to support their work steering women away from crime. The press release reiterates the Government’s commitment to reduce the number of women in custody and improve conditions for those that are serving time. It also says explicitly that, although women who commit the most serious crimes will always be sent to prison, custody should always be a last resort.

The MoJ says that the number of women in custody has fallen by 10% since 2010 and government investment in community services should see this trend continue in the long-term. The number of women in English and Welsh prisons last Friday stood at 3,148, down from 3,697 this time last year, although most of this fall can be attributed to the backlog in the courts which has grown rapidly throughout the pandemic. The press release does, however, acknowledge that the recruitment of an extra 20,000 police officers is expected to cause a temporary increase in in the female prison population.

The Prisons and Probation Minister, Lucy Frazer, gave examples of a couple of the sorts of organisations who will receive the new funding. Willowdene in Shropshire, which was awarded nearly £60,000, uses a mixture of therapy that addresses traumatic life experiences and work placements to rehabilitate women dealing with issues such as substance misuse and exploitation. Cheshire Without Abuse also receives £60,000 for its work with domestic abuse victims, as cases continue to rise during lockdown. The MoJ acknowledges that these services play a crucial part in preventing women being drawn into crime and help reduce rates of reoffending for those that are.

However, the MoJ also announced that up to 500 new places will be built in existing prisons to increase availability of single cells and improve conditions. The Ministry says that the new places will include in-cell showers and will allow more women to be held in open conditions, providing greater opportunities for employment and education while completing their sentence. Some of the new places will also allow women to have overnight visits with their children to prepare for life back home. The MoJ claims, that if, as expected, the female prison population falls longer-term, these modern facilities will allow the Prison Service to close old accommodation. Many penal reform organisations such as the Howard League criticised the building of new prison cells for women at the same time as an announcement about incarcerating fewer women. They say that as well as sending a mixed message, the British experience is that when we build new prisons we tend to fill them and rarely decommission the old ones, resulting in an ever-growing prison population.

Concordat

The second announcement, also on Saturday, was the long awaited publication of a “Concordat of Women in or at risk of contact with the Criminal Justice System“. The Concordat, which was promised in the Female Offender Strategy, itself published in June 2018, sets out how Government and other partners should work together at national and local levels to identify and respond to the needs of women. The Concordat acknowledges that many women in contact with the criminal justice system have gender-specific and often complex needs and that a multi-agency approach is needed to provide effective early intervention and prevention of crime, allowing women to turn their lives around for the benefit of their victims, their families, wider society, and for the women themselves.

The Concordat commits the Government to promote work by local agencies, including the voluntary sector, and will encourage them to try new and innovative interventions to deliver the outcomes specified in the agreement. It also makes a commitment to a gender- and trauma-informed approach and to publish annual reports about the progress of the new approach.

We shall await the publication of the first progress report next January to see if the new arrangements are making a difference.