My Lords, I am pleased to move this amendment, which has the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I am grateful for the knowledge and wisdom they will bring to the debate. I declare an
interest as Anglican Bishop for Her Majesty’s Prisons in England and Wales and president of the Nelson Trust.
The sentencing of a primary carer can have a serious detrimental impact on the rights of a child and their life chances, yet the fact that they are a primary carer is not consistently considered by the court making the sentencing decision. Amendment 110 would require judges to consider the impact on a child of the decision of not granting bail when determining in criminal proceedings whether to grant bail to a primary carer of that dependent child. Amendments 215 to 217 aim to address inconsistencies in sentencing by requiring judges and magistrates to give due regard to the impact of a sentence on any dependent children and their welfare when sentencing a primary carer. The intention of Amendment 218 is to gather the relevant data about the number of prisoners who are primary carers and the number of children who have a primary carer in custody. Given that there are five amendments here, I hope noble Lords will bear with me.
I know other noble Lords will cover in greater detail the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the rights of children whose primary carer is in prison be upheld. In the vast majority of cases, the primary carer is the mother, and this will be my point of reference today. However, I acknowledge that for some children the primary carer may be someone else. My starting point with these amendments is not that primary carers—mothers in the most part—should never be given a custodial sentence. It is instead that we must find a way for the least harm to be caused as a consequence of sentencing. Custodial sentences for mothers punish children, including the unborn, and that is not justice.
I believe not only that every person is created precious and with unique potential but that we are created as people of relationships and that perfect wholeness and harmony—shalom—is about everything in a perfect interdependent relationship: humanity and all creation; of course, I would add, rooted in God. If we want a criminal justice system which is about justice, safety, transformation and the flourishing of individuals, communities and society, we have to attend to the whole picture of relationships—the whole system, and indeed, the long term. If we are to strengthen family ties, reduce reoffending and disrupt intergenerational cycles of abuse, trauma and offending, there must be consideration of where and how a mother serves her sentence.
So often prison is not able to meet the rehabilitative needs of the people who are sent there and will also not be about enabling the better safety of the public or strengthening communities and society. Many women are often in prison for only a few weeks. The majority of women are there for less than six months and, according to the Prison Reform Trust:
“72% of women who entered prison under sentence in 2020 have committed a non-violent offence.”
Alternative community-based provision must be available, well funded and trusted by those making sentencing decisions.
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Last month, the Lord Speaker graciously allowed me to host an event here in the River Room. The most powerful speaker at that event was a young mother who shared her lived experience of addiction, domestic violence and a point-of-arrest diversion programme facilitated by the Nelson Trust through Avon and Somerset Police. I am grateful to have further opportunities to speak about the need for diversion later in Committee, so in this debate I will simply repeat Chloe’s powerful testimony of restoration. She said: “I now have my family back. I see my daughters every day. They stay overnight with me and together we are making happy memories. I am the happy, confident, healthy mum I always wanted to be and now I am one year sober.”
Some 95% of children have to leave their home when their mother goes to prison. Parental imprisonment is recognised as an adverse childhood experience that could have a substantial negative impact on children’s long-term health and well-being as well as their educational attainment. It can also seriously affect their life expectancy and the likelihood of going to prison themselves. According to Dr Shona Minson,
“children suffer short, medium, and long term and lifelong harms from being deprived of their parent by imprisonment.”
So often, these children—and the impact on their lives—lurk in the shadows unseen and the light needs to be shone there if we are to see the full picture and the consequences of our failing to uphold the right of the child within our criminal justice system. We also need to recognise that the impact on these children may not remain hidden in the long term. The intergenerational impact of imprisonment is well documented. Reportedly, 65% of boys with a convicted parent go on to offend themselves and children of prisoners have twice the risk of antisocial behaviour compared with their peers.
Three weeks ago, I visited Adelaide House, the female approved premises in Liverpool. One of the women there recalled how her mother was in and out of prison. She said: “I was passed from pillar to post, which resulted in my becoming dependent on drugs at the age of 13, just to get me through the day. This has been ongoing throughout my adult life. Looking back, I recognise that my mother had mental health issues and dependencies and received no support.” Holistic, trauma-informed support, including parenting education, is available in community interventions such as those provided by women’s centres, which is where the money needs to be channelled.
I have said before in this House that even if someone is utterly callous and cares little about the offender and their family, the financial aspects alone make no sense at all. The report, Counting the Cost of Maternal Imprisonment, published by Crest Advisory last week, states:
“Our research shows that interventions with children affected by maternal imprisonment were costing the taxpayer as much as £265,008 per family when the cost of the mother’s custodial sentence is taken into consideration.”
We must be better at seeing the whole picture, and considering the child’s rights here is the ultimate early intervention.
Sarah Beresford’s 2018 report for the Prison Reform Trust and Families Outside found:
“Every aspect of a child’s life is disrupted when a mother goes to prison”.
The report recommended introducing child impact assessments to ensure that children are listened to at every stage of their mother’s journey—arrest, court, imprisonment or community sentence, and on release—and that they are meaningfully and appropriately involved in decision-making about their care and any support needs they may have.
At this point, I want to mention the unborn child too. I am sure many noble Lords will be aware of the upsetting report published in September regarding the death of Baby A in HMP Bronzefield. The mother had not been sentenced; she was on remand. It is a tragic case and of course a complex one, but I stand with organisations such as Birth Companions, Level Up and Women in Prison in calling for an end to the imprisonment of pregnant women in all but the most exceptional circumstances. Through these amendments, we hope that sentencing judges will consider the real impact on the unborn child of imprisoning their mother.
In all this, I want to keep focused on the big picture, and communities and societies as a whole. That is surely vital if we are to keep victims of crime clearly in our view too. From the review by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, into the importance of strengthening female offenders’ family and other relationships, published in 2019, we know that family ties are a factor in reducing reoffending, with benefits for society as a whole.
The Government’s own female offender strategy, published in 2018, acknowledged that:
“Custody results in significant disruptions to family life”
and that many women
“could be more successfully supported in the community, where reoffending outcomes are better.”
Indeed, it recognised
“the negative impacts on families of imprisoned mothers and the heightened risk of intergenerational offending”
and committed to rolling out the “Safeguarding Children When Sentencing Mothers” training material developed by the aforementioned Dr Minson, saying:
“This training raises awareness of the diverse implications of maternal imprisonment for children.”
So we can see that attempts have been made to reduce the impact on children, but they are not applied consistently. The Joint Committee on Human Rights found that, despite the Sentencing Council strengthening its guidance to judges and magistrates, evidence to the inquiry clearly indicated that the guidance was not being satisfactorily adhered to, and questions remain about whether these steps go fast or far enough to guarantee children’s rights.
We need to know the full picture but at present that is distinctly lacking. Joining up social services, whose primary responsibility is the welfare of the child, needs data. In 2019 Crest Advisory estimated that 17,000 children per year are affected by maternal imprisonment, but that is just an estimate. The Government do not know the true figure. In response to my Written Question in December last year inquiring how many women in prison are pregnant or are mothers with primary caring responsibilities, I was told:
“Pregnancy data is collected locally by individual prisons, to ensure the appropriate support can be provided to women in our care. Currently, there is no central collection of this data.”
So there is local data but no national picture. If we do not know where those pregnant mothers are, how can we adequately support them? I am aware of the argument that prisoners may not wish to disclose that they are parents for fear of social services’ involvement, but there must be a solution to this. I am heartened that in the same reply to my Written Question the Government said they were
“considering how to monitor and publish this information”.
I would be grateful for an update from the Minister in that regard.
In summing up, I reiterate that my view is not that primary carers should never be sentenced to a custodial sentence, but the Government must use the timely opportunity provided by this Bill to consider the big picture and ensure that the rights of children and the impact on their lives are brought to the fore. Doing that would of course also enable the Government to make progress on their own ambitions to radically reduce the number of women in prison, included in their female offender strategy and their national concordat on women in the criminal justice system as well as in the recommendations of the Farmer review on women. I ask noble Lords to support these amendments, and I beg to move.