Criminal Justice: Women

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Corston for producing this excellent, profound, humane and much-needed report. I am also grateful to her for emphasising in her speech the need for government departments to work together on the issues. The report has produced some positive responses from Government and I know that those speaking in the debate will be following the promised progress. I wish to speak about women who offend who also have drug-related problems. I declare an interest as the chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. In this regard, I was pleased to see in the Government response to Recommendation 31 that a detailed action plan for the development of the national service framework for women will be drawn up, and that it will include arrangements to ensure appropriate linkages and co-ordination with other commissioning frameworks, such as health, communities, drug services, local services and local authorities. Women, and particularly women in trouble with the law, need, more than most, collaboration between support services, particularly if they are drug users, have suffered abuse, have mental health problems and poor educational achievement, as many have. Progress is being made. There is good news on drug courts; four more have been set up and there will be a pilot study to examine the concept of a mental health court. Over the past few years, there has been a tenfold increase in investment in drugs work in prison. By the end of April, 29 prisons will have introduced the integrated drug treatment system. That will be extended to a further 20 prisons over the next 12 months, with the Department of Health. Primary care trusts now provide prison health services, including treatment services. That is relatively new, but we hope that prison health care in general will improve. My noble friend Lord Carter called for us to get on with reform, and I agree. In relation to drug abuse, my organisation, the National Treatment Agency, will be responding to the report of my noble friend Lady Corston on a regular basis. I will mention that further in a moment. First, I shall state a few facts on women and drug use. The report points out that drug addiction plays a huge part in all offending and that that seems to be disproportionately the case with women. Around 70 per cent of women coming into custody require clinical detoxification, compared with 50 per cent of men. Some women have a £200 a day crack and heroin habit and many are alcoholics. That is on top of mental health problems. More than one in five women in prison are foreign nationals and 80 per cent of them are convicted of drugs offences. I ask the Minister how many of those foreign nationals are drug mules exploited by traffickers to carry drugs between countries. In 2006-07, female prisoners undertook 527 intensive drug treatment programme starts and had 384 completions. That is a completion rate of 73 per cent, which is very high. National Treatment Agency research on the impact of treatment consistently shows that women do better in drug treatment in terms of retention, completion and self-reported satisfaction, then men. Black women do particularly well. The National Treatment Agency is undertaking work in relation to developing the women’s offender health strategy, a work stream within the improving health, supporting justice strategy that is currently out for consultation. We are doing that analysis to review how effectively the drug intervention programme is engaging women offenders. The evidence that we have so far suggests that women are experiencing a slightly better rate of engagement and retention than men. We hope to undertake a more detailed analysis of that. As with all drug treatment programmes, continuity of care—what we call the treatment pathway—is vital if people are to succeed in controlling a substance misuse habit. Issues around support for families, education and employment opportunities, housing and social care are essential to support treatment outcomes. For women, that issue needs particular attention. My noble friend Lady Corston and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, pointed out that the dispersal issue militates against women performing well. Due to the smaller number of female prisons, prisoners are often held a long way from their homes and families. That makes resettlement and maintaining contact harder, especially if they are substance misusers. I have had correspondence with the Nottinghamshire County Council drug action team, which points out that, in Nottinghamshire, the criminal justice intervention team has a women’s worker in the aftercare team, who has a significant role in arranging advocacy for her clients. Through this and other good practice, the council states that the numbers of women going into prison is falling, with an increase for those in the women’s treatment service receiving community treatment services. There is good practice around. I ask the Minister how this good practice is being shared so that there is a continuous learning cycle. In Chapter 6 of my noble friend’s report, she points out the need for holistic women-centred approaches and the need to make better use of community provision. The Government response has been positive about this with regional offender managers now having to consider the needs of women in their regions as part of the service level agreement negotiations with probation boards. Substance misuse must be a feature. Again, we must look to developing good practice, monitoring progress and sharing what good practice emerges. There are intensive drug rehabilitation programmes for women: for example, a cognitive behaviour therapy programme in Low Newton offering 24 sessions over eight weeks; a short-duration programme aimed at women on remand, or on short sentences, in five establishments; a 12-step abstinence programme delivered in one establishment; a therapeutic community programme in Drake Hall; and a programme called choices, attitudes, relations and emotions—CARE—is being piloted in another. This programme is concerned with women in custody convicted of violent and/or substance misuse related offences. Again, it will be important to monitor these interventions and learn from any good practice which emerges. All those in prison should have access to appropriate and well-designed drug treatment programmes and good follow-up. Otherwise, we will have the continuing problem of the revolving door, with people leaving prison but being back very quickly, or dead from a substance misuse overdose. There is much being established in relation to women in the criminal justice system and many approaches to substance misuse are being tried out. I wonder if my noble friend, to whom we are indebted for this debate today, will consider bringing this issue back in a year’s time so that we can assess progress. I sense there will be all-party consensus and concern, so let us look at this issue again. In the mean time I look forward to the Minister’s response.