Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

My Lords, I was not intending to speak to these amendments but, having been involved in prisoner resettlement in the past, I feel it is important to say that Friday release has a particular impact on younger women prisoners if their only option is a bail hostel. Women, as we know, are much more likely to find their family life disrupted than men during the often short sentences that they suffer. The noble Lord mentioned somebody being in a car round the corner. That very patient person who was managing that young woman as a sex worker before she went into prison will spend the whole day waiting to snatch her away and take her back to the life she was in before. When the alternative options are so dreadful for such young women, it is not surprising that there are the statistics on them falling back into the kind of oppression they knew before. Our whole approach to resettlement would be advanced hugely by these amendments being accepted by the Government.