Cutting crime and reducing the number of vulnerable women being sent to prison is top of the agenda at the first meeting of the Women's Justice Board.
- Women's Justice Board starts vital work today to make our streets safer
- Aims to reduce number of women in prison, cut reoffending, and better support children
- Two-thirds of women prisoners report being victims of domestic abuse
- Estimated 17,000 children affected when mum goes to prison every year
The Board will be launched today by Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and will be chaired by Prisons Minister James Timpson. It brings together criminal justice experts to identify better ways to stop women committing crimes and make streets safer as part of the Government's Plan for Change.
Over half (55%) of women prisoners are mothers and children's lives are often upended when the parent they most depend upon goes to prison, with three quarters leaving the family home after they are imprisoned. A key priority of the Board will be to ensure punishments for female offenders do not also punish their children.
Criminal justice philanthropist Lady Edwina Grosvenor, former prison governor and Chief Executive of the Prison Reform Trust, Pia Sinha, and former Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Baird are among those who will advise the Government.
The group will publish a new strategy later this year, looking at options to cut reoffending like women's centres, drug rehabilitation and tagging which might better help women out of the revolving door of crime. A further £7.2 million has been awarded this year to charities, community organisations and Police and Crime Commissioners today to support existing work.
Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood will open the Board's first meeting, after unveiling its creation in September last year.
Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said:
The simple truth is that we are sending too many women to prison. Many are victims themselves, and over half are mothers, leaving a child behind when they go inside.
We need to do things differently, and that's why I have launched the Women's Justice Board today. It is high time we found better solutions to help vulnerable women turn their lives around.
Self-harm in women's prisons is nine times higher than in men's and women serving short custodial sentences are more likely to reoffend than those serving community sentences.
Estimates suggest 17,000 children are affected every year because of their mother being sent to prison, resulting in many thousands of children having to go live with other relatives or enter the care system. The Government has committed to identifying and supporting them earlier on as children with parents in prison are far more likely to commit crime themselves later in life than those without.
Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, James Timpson, said:
One of my earliest memories of the prison system is waiting outside HMP Styal as a child while my mum took babies she'd fostered in to see their mothers. It's a sad truth that children like them are still, today, more likely to end up locked up themselves later in life because of their mum's crime many years before.
Punishment is important. But, as chair of the new Women's Justice Board, I want better punishments that steer women away from a life of crime and give children the best start in life.
The Women's Justice Board will meet four times a year and the first meeting will review the current issues contributing to female offending and how these can be best tackled.
They will later use the findings of the upcoming Sentencing Review to consider how community sentences, like tagging and drug treatment, can be used as effective ways to divert women away from crime.
While there will always be women who need to be in prison to keep the public safe, the Board will also look at how to avoid the unnecessary imprisonment of pregnant women and those with young children.
The other members of the Board are:
- Kate Green, Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester for Safer and Stronger Communities.
- Dr Tom McNeil, Chief Executive of the JABBS Foundation for Women and Girls.
- Katy Swaine Williams, a freelance consultant with research, policy and legal expertise on women in the criminal justice system.
- Dr Shona Minson, research associate at the University of Oxford's Centre for Criminology
- Bernie Bowen-Thomson, Chief Executive of Safer Wales.
- Michaela Booth, national lead for patient and family engagement at healthcare services provider Practice Plus Group.
- Anne Fox, Chief Executive of voluntary sector group Clinks.
Anne Fox, Chief Executive of Clinks said:
I'm delighted to be asked to serve on the Women's Justice Board. I do so as someone coming from the community of voluntary and community sector specialist organisations working to support women who are criminalised and underserved by a criminal justice system that does not meet their needs and contributes to poor outcomes for justice involved women and their families.
The board's establishment and that of a partnership delivery group working with it is very welcome. There is a need for continued bold decisions and new thinking about how the system works as it currently doesn't. I'm glad the voluntary sector in criminal justice and the women we support can be part of that thinking.
The Board will be supported by the new Women in Justice Partnership Delivery Group, which will include external experts from the voluntary and community sector, recruited by open competition, as well as senior government representatives from other departments.
This Group will be tasked with implementing the work identified by the Women's Justice Board to drive progress towards the goal of reducing the number of women in custody.
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