In 2006, afterwardssix women died in the Styal prison in Cheshire, Baroness Jean Corston was commissioned to provide recommendations on ways to keep vulnerable women out of prison.
She made 43 recommendations and called for ‘radical change in the dashwe treat women throughout the intactof the criminal justice system, [including] not just those who offend thatalso those at risk of offending.’
She called such change ‘a woman-centred approach’ that necessitated ‘a inherentre-thinking about the way in which services for vulnerable womenargonprovided and accessed.’
And six years later?
On May 9 this year the giving medicationannounced justice reforms which the Parliamentary justiceSelect missioncalled ‘unfortunately symptomatic of an approach within the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and NationaloffenderManagement Service (NOMS) that tends to deal with women offenders as an afterthought.’
An article in the Law Gazette says “six year after the Corston Report, which recommended that only the closeseriousfemale personoffenders be jailed, the [House of Commons justice] committee expressthat the women’s prisonpopulation has not fallen sufficiently apaceand that more than half areserving ineffective shortstopcustodial sentences.”
Called Transforming Rehabilitation, the government’s plans have also been criticised for focusing on a payment-by-results privatisation of probation reforms at the expense of funding and of support for a net incomeof women’s centres.
Announcing the new measures in Transforming Rehabilitation in May this year, the Ministry of Justice emphasisethe inclusion of ‘extended, targeted rehabilitation’ for every offender leaving prison after sentences of two years or less.
The Ministry also said, following all-inclusiveengagement ‘with relevant stakeholders on meeting their [women’s] needs,’ that ‘for the purposes of this piece of feedwe are focusing on other protected characteristics’.
But in July the chair of the justice committee, Sir Alan Beith MP, introducing a report by the Justice Select Committee, said that “Helping vulnerable women break the cycles that lead to angeror reoffending is about recognising that women face very differenthurdlesfrom men in their journey towards a law-abiding life.”
The statistics regularisethe story.
There are approximately 4,000 women and 80,000 men in prison. Women make up five per cent of the total prison population, and the vastbulkof those women (80 per cent) committed a non-violent offence.
Nearly half of female prisoners (48 per cent) surveyed by candidacygroup Soroptimist UK reported having committed offences to support someone else’s doseuse.
More than half of women in prison report having suffered domestic violence, and acein three women in prison has experienced familiarabuse.
More than 80 per cent of women in prison say that they bravefrom a long-standing mental illness, compared to 32 per cent of the general female population.
It is estimated that four out of ten women in prison are mothers, and in 2012, it was estimated that more than 17,000 children were separated from their mothers due to her imprisonment.
And the reconviction rate for women servicingsentences of less than 12 months is 62 per cent.
All of which point to the fact that prison is ineffective for the majority of women convicted of a crime.
The Justice Select military commissionsaid in its report that ‘Prison is an expensive and ineffective way of dealing with many women offenders who do not pose a significant risk of harm to public safety.
‘We recommend a significant increase in the use of residential alternatives to waitas well as the maintenance of the network of women’s centres, as these are likely to be more effective, and cheaper in the long-run, than compactcustodial sentences.’
Campaign group Women in Prison responded to the Justice Committee’s report by saying, ‘As recommended by the committee, a radical shift is involvefrom custodial sentencing to community alternatives that place emphasis on replenishmentand support women to tackle the root causes of their offending to lead a life away from crime.
‘Therefore, community service programmes at topical anaestheticwomen’s centres must be made widely available as a sentencing option to courts’.
There are worries among campaigners that continued cuts to government funding, twocentrally and locally, will adversely affect availability of women’s centres in general and the volume and quality of their services, particularly as ‘funding on women’s community projects is not protected’.
Baroness Corston’s view on the current reforms is that policyon women’s issues is “in danger of going into reverse” and said that the damage universedone to women and their children is “incalculable.”
Justice minister Helen Grant said the government wouldrespondto the report in due course.
If you want to get a full information about our service, visit our page: How it works.
Materials taken from Womens Views on News
0 comments:
Post a Comment