Criminal Justice: Women

rose to call attention to the report by Baroness Corston entitled Review of Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System, and the Government’s response (Cm 7261); and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity today to discuss my report on women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system. The background to my report was the increase in the deaths in custody of women at the beginning of this decade. In 2003, there were 14 such deaths. In 2004 there were 13. Six of those were in HM Prison and Young Offender Institution Styal over a 13-month period. Toward the end of that period, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman for England and Wales, Stephen Shaw, was given responsibility for conducting an independent investigation into deaths in custody and he did so for the last woman who died in Styal, but he took account of the other deaths. Concurrently, there were calls for a public inquiry and the then Home Secretary, my right honourable friend Charles Clarke, decided that a public inquiry would not reveal anything not recommended or discovered by the ombudsman. But he was particularly struck by a letter from the coroner for Cheshire, Nicholas Rheinberg, who said in conducting the inquest into the deaths: "““I saw a group of damaged individuals, committing for the most part petty crime for whom imprisonment represented a disproportionate response. That was what particularly struck me with Julie Walsh who had spent the majority of her adult life serving at regular intervals short periods of imprisonment for crimes which represented a social nuisance rather than anything that demanded the most extreme form of punishment. I was greatly saddened by the pathetic individuals who came before me as witnesses who no doubt mirrored the pathetic individuals who had died””." This led the then Home Secretary to decide that such a review would be appropriate. I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland and my honourable friend Fiona Mactaggart MP, who were both Ministers in the Home Office at that time, and who asked me to conduct the review. I express my thanks to Jenny Hall and Nigel Hancock from the Safer Custody Group and the members of my review group for giving so generously of their time and expertise in helping me with my work. This was a practical piece of work drawing on research dating back to 1971, all of which pointed in the same direction, and setting out a blueprint for change involving seven government departments. It is impossible to do justice today in the time available to a 100-page report making 43 recommendations and a comprehensive response from the Government. I will concentrate on a few key issues. In 2002, 12,650 women were received into custody, and 4,100 of them were sentenced. Some 8,350 were remanded, and 66 per cent of them did not even get a custodial sentence. The average stay in prison was 42 days, which was long enough to lose their homes and their children, and they generally got neither back. The profile of women in prison is characterised by mental illness, drug and alcohol misuse, lack of educational qualifications, suicidal tendencies, no life skills and domestic and sexual abuse. In fact, I concluded that we are rightly exercised about paedophiles, but we do not seem to have much sympathy or give much attention to their victims, many of whom end up in prison. They are looked after by staff whose preliminary training was eight weeks’ training in priorities for a male prison, such as security. Over two-thirds of the women were mothers living with their children prior to prison. Indeed, 17,000 children a year are affected by their mother’s imprisonment. These women generally pose no risk to the public and are in prison time after time. They are imprisoned at a considerable distance from home because of the relatively small number of women in prison and the geographical dispersal of the prisons. At the start of the inquiry in March 2006, I made it clear to officials with whom I worked that I started from a simple premise that has guided me ever since I became a women’s organiser 32 years ago; women and men are different but equal, and if you treat them the same, the outcome is not equality. It is my passionate belief that the Prison Service has been run on the basis that it is right to treat people the same and that equality will be the outcome. But prisons are for men. That is how they are configured and run, and that is where the training comes from. Women’s priorities are different. Let me give a couple of examples. For most prisoners, it is assumed that the most important thing on leaving prison is work. Employability is a high priority, and I do not quarrel with that, except that for women housing is a great priority. Time and again, women said to me, ““All I want is somewhere for me and my children to live, and I do not want to be stuck in the Catch-22 of having no home so I cannot get my children back, and not having my children so I cannot get a home””. Last April, the gender equality duty was passed into law by Parliament, putting an obligation on public authorities to ensure that their policies and practices do not have a differential impact on women. But I found in the Prison Service with regard to the women’s estate that there was no one in charge and no corporate memory. The Government’s response is a curate’s egg, which is very good in parts. There is an acceptance in principle that custodial sentences for women must be reserved for serious and violent offenders who pose a threat to the public. A high-level champion for women who offend or who are at risk of offending—which I recommended—has been identified by my honourable friend Maria Eagle, a junior Minister in the Home Office. She is leading a subgroup of Ministers working independently but reporting to the interministerial group to reduce reoffending. I felt strongly that if that if that had been left with the interministerial group itself it would always have been the last item on the agenda, because that is what happens with women’s issues. My honourable friend Maria Eagle is working with my honourable and learned friend the Solicitor-General, Vera Baird, whose professional life was almost exclusively concerned with women suffering domestic abuse and before the courts, and Barbara Follett, the Equality Minister. That is extraordinarily important because she is one of the Women’s Ministers and their second priority as Women’s Ministers is women offenders. They are joined by junior Ministers from the Department of Health and the Home Office and there is input from the Department for Communities and Local Government. I say to the Government that the task of those Ministers that must be supported will be to ensure that the agenda is embedded throughout government so that it survives changes in Ministers and officials. As to the gender equality duty, the National Offender Management Service, NOMS, is due to publish a national service framework for women on 1 April. It has been a long time coming. When I started my review two years ago I was told that its publication was forthcoming. This is their opportunity to disprove those civil servants who say that NOMS stands for ““Nightmare on Marsham Street””. The NOMS leadership must ensure that, in the understandable focus on violent and dangerous offenders, women offenders are not forgotten, and we will judge it on results. The Government have decided not to establish a commission for women who offend or are at risk of offending, as I recommended, but intend instead to set up a new cross-departmental criminal justice women’s unit headed by a senior civil servant. I hope that this person is very senior and can command authority. My experience is that all too often such initiatives start with good intentions, then members of a group send deputies to meetings and we end up with a group of junior note-takers who have no authority. My central recommendation revolves around the Together Women project and the opportunity it provides for establishing a network of women’s centres taking a woman-centred approach for women who offend or are at risk of offending. I visited three such centres: the Asha centre in Worcester, the Calderdale in Halifax and the 218 centre in Glasgow—funded by the Scottish Executive, incidentally—which is active in the courts and has a secure facility within its premises, often for women on remand. What I saw there was inspiring. I saw women who had been in and out of prison, and some who had not been in prison but might have ended up there, like some of those women who were murdered in Ipswich the year before last. I saw those women being able to develop self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth, three things that women prisoners do not generally have and which are the basis of good citizenship and turn people into good neighbours. It was inspirational, and cost effective because a place at the Asha centre costs £750 per year. I was told by officials in the senior Home Office that the total cost of keeping a woman in prison is £77,000. I know which is the better value for money. I also recommended small custodial units for women to replace the current women’s prison estate over a 10-year period. All I say to my noble friend and to our colleagues in the Treasury is that it has been agreed that £1.5 billion is to be spent on prison-building. I came across rather hidebound attitudes to what was considered to be an appropriate prison building. If we are going to spend that money, I suggest that at least one small custodial unit for women should be included in that £1.5 billion and that perhaps it should be in Wales because there is no such facility for women in Wales. They have to go to Eastwood Park near Bristol, which makes family ties difficult. I want to emphasise that women’s prisons should never be on shared sites. I say to my noble friend Lord Carter that the proposal for Titan prisons—a number of prisons on satellite sites sharing services and facilities—is an issue for a future debate, but there should never be one women’s prison on a Titan site where the other prisons are male because there will be one ethos on that site and it will be a male ethos. All experience has shown that. I do not want that to happen and for people to say afterwards, ““We didn’t know that””. It is vital to have cross-government action. The Department for Communities and Local Government has a huge job in sorting out housing, social exclusion and intentional homelessness issues. I am pleased to say that I met my noble friend Lady Andrews in November, and I am impressed at how passionate she has become about this subject. I know that her department is now sponsoring an ““Adults facing Chronic Exclusion”” programme. There is a great challenge for the Department of Health to implement its own women’s mental health strategy to improve detoxification services. Everywhere I went I was told that these services have improved in recent years, but much more is needed. With regard to routine strip-searching, I was persuaded by prison governors on how inappropriate it is. It wastes staff time; it is corrosive of relationships between staff and prisoners; it is deeply humiliating and it is a terrible thing to do to women who have been sexually abused, which represents a considerable proportion of women prisoners. Having been persuaded by prison governors to put this in my report, I am pleased that pilots are going on and that routine strip-searching will change into a slightly more acceptable mode. I hope that the pilots will lead to strip-searches in future being carried out on an intelligence-led basis. One thing that the Government did not accept in my report, to which I draw your Lordships’ attention, is the right to life in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. When the state takes somebody into custody it has an absolute obligation to preserve life. I feel strongly that when that obligation is breached and a person dies, the family should be given equality of arms at law and offered public funding to enable them to be represented at inquests. In their response the Government said that legal representation was not a requirement. I found that breathtaking. If that is the case, why are the Government always represented by senior counsel and barristers? I feel very strongly that that should be addressed. I met bereaved families and was humbled and moved at their plight. Why should they have to spend their money because the Government are at fault? I received a letter from a magistrate on an issue that I want to raise towards the end of my comments. He wrote: "““Regarding your report on women in prison, I think it is important that magistrates are challenged in their training about their attitudes to women offenders—especially from the conviction aspect.""I found as an operating magistrate for nearly 20 years that frequently a submerged view was that the fact that a woman was guilty was worse than if a man had committed the same crime and consequently there was a marked tendency to be harsher in administering punishment. I’m of the view that this is, unfortunately, some sort of inbred, cultural phenomenon. I didn’t find evidence that it was a deliberate position—or even a conscious one””." I think he is right. We have to ensure that in the training of sentencers a different attitude is taken. One of the women who took her life was in prison for a first offence of wounding with intent. She had been given a life sentence. I cannot imagine that that sentence would have been given to a man. What I am suggesting is popular. Towards the end of last year SmartJustice commissioned a survey by ICM, which showed that 86 per cent of people support community alternatives to prison—centres where women are sent to address the causes of their crimes while doing compulsory community work. The Government can rest assured that that flies in the face of some of the stuff that we read in the press, and that taking a more sensible, civilised and more cost-effective approach to these women can turn them into better citizens and enable them to fulfil their family obligations. I beg to move for Papers.