I beg to move,
That this House has considered the recall of women to prisons.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. During my time as MP for Swansea East, I have engaged with many women in the criminal justice system by visiting prisons up and down the country and mother-and-baby units in them, and it has always been made clear to me that the reasons why women are in the criminal justice system are multifaceted and complex.
The Prison Reform Trust’s report “Broken Trust: The rising numbers of women recalled to prison” illustrates the fact that the reasons for that are also multifaceted and complex, and the number of women being recalled is rising quickly. Of course, it is right that women are recalled to prison in some instances—if they are at imminent risk of causing harm to the public or of reoffending, for example—but this debate is not about that; it is about the huge increase in the number of women being recalled to prison and whether that increase is helping women to break their cycle of criminality and creating safer communities and opportunities for the women themselves.
The “Broken Trust” report points to a number of reasons for the steep rise in the number of women being recalled. I will cover those in more detail later. I think that it will be useful now to make clear the current situation regarding the recall of women to prison. An individual can be recalled to prison if they have served a sentence of more than a day. A probation officer will normally initiate the recall. About 3,800 women are currently in prison in the UK—we have one of the highest female imprisonment rates in western Europe. The female offender strategy states that about nine in 10 women in prison on remand or serving 12 months or less pose a low or medium risk of serious harm to the public. In the year ending September 2018, there were 1,846 recalls of women to custody while on licence.
One significant contributory factor in the steep rise in the number of such recalls is the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014—affectionately known as the ORA. It introduced a provision whereby everyone sentenced to a day or more in prison would be supervised by probation services on their release. Before the ORA, those sentenced to a term of imprisonment of less than 12 months were not supervised on release. In 2017, 72% of women sentenced to custody were sentenced to six months or less, compared with 56% of men. That demonstrates how the change brought in under the ORA disproportionately affects women. As the “Broken Trust” report states, on page 3:
“From the moment it was announced that post-custody supervision would be extended to people sentenced to less than 12 months, two things were obvious: this would result in the imprisonment of large numbers of people; and the impact would fall disproportionately upon women.”
Reforms that are meant to be supporting individuals are having the opposite effect and keeping them trapped in cycles of the criminal justice system, rather than allowing them to take positive steps in their lives. That is a direct result of the changes brought about under a previous Secretary of State for Justice. Previously, anyone
sentenced to a short period in prison served their term and on release that was it. Putting in place a year of additional supervision—in addition to the prison term—with recalls if people fail to comply, is largely responsible for the huge increase in recalls.