Delivering the female offender strategy

The Delivery Plan sets out how Government will deliver four key priorities to reduce women’s offending over the period of the 2022–25 Spending Review

The Ministry of Justice has today published its Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan 2022 to 2025, four and a half years since the strategy itself was published. Many commentators will feel that the publication of a plan which covers 2022 in January 2023 typifies the MoJ’s slow progress on implementation of the strategy.

However, it is fair to say that this delivery plan is an important step forward, promising action rather than more policy.

The plan

The Delivery Plan sets out how Government will deliver four key priorities to reduce women’s offending over the period of the 2022–25 Spending Review:

1. Fewer women entering the justice system and reoffending
2. Fewer women serving short custodial sentences with a greater proportion managed successfully in the community
3. Better outcomes for women in custody
4. Protecting the public through better outcomes for women on release

Below we look briefly at the main areas of activity promised under each priority area.

Fewer women entering the justice system

The government’s plans around early intervention and prevention include:

• A multi-agency approach to develop women’s services in the community including grant funding to support the involvement of the voluntary sector.
• New guidance and training to ensure police forces understand and respond effectively to the needs of vulnerable women, including developing a tactical toolkit by March 2023.
• Better liaison and diversion services for women.
• Work with non-police prosecutors to explore options for addressing the high number of women prosecuted for offences such as TV licence evasion.

Fewer women serving short sentences

The MoJ says it wants to see more women managed effectively in the community, where the offence committed allows it, with women remaining closer to their families and support networks and engaging with rehabilitative support to prevent re-offending. In order to achieve this it wants to encourage more community sentencing options and reduce the number of women remanded to custody. It also intends to Problem Solving Courts (PSCs), including one site in Birmingham that will focus exclusively on women.

Better outcomes for women in prison

The delivery plan re-states most of the objectives in the prisons white paper including improving safety for women in custody with a key focus on reducing the severity and instances of self-harm through the expansion of therapeutic services and exploring how we can reduce the need for women to move between prisons.

Another key objective is increasing the training for prison staff, particularly around trauma-informed practice. The MoJ also pledges to improve the quality of healthcare available to women in prison and to ensure that the women’s prison estate offers decent accommodation that supports rehabilitation, continuing work to deliver new facilities in women’s prisons, through a combination of Open and Closed places.

Better resettlement

The higher number of women who are homeless on release has been a chronic problem and the MoJ has committed itself to address this by recruiting up to nine Strategic Housing Specialists by the end of this month. The delivery plan also talks about developing a Resettlement Passport that provides women with the key information and services that they need to adjust to lead a crime-free life to address known drivers of repeat offending. A key issue is also to provide continuity of care for the large proportion of women who struggle with mental health and/or drug and alcohol problems.

Conclusion

Criminal justice commentators have been quick to agree that while the delivery plan focuses on the right issues, the proof of whether the MoJ is really committed to improve the way the criminal justice system deals will women will be in whether and how quickly and fully the department implements the commitments outlined in the delivery plan.