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
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:
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:
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:
Anne Fox, Chief Executive of Clinks said:
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.
Notes to Editors