To ask Her Majesty's Government how will work programs in prisons be commissioned?

Baroness Uddin (Labour)

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for bringing this matter before the House in a most poignant manner. It gives me an opportunity to share my experience of working with Kazuri, a social enterprise working to re-house female ex-offenders and women who have suffered domestic violence.

I had the privilege recently to launch Kazuri's report in the House, attended by grass-root practitioners and campaigning organisations, as well as NOMS and the Ministry of Justice. There were more than 80 individuals present. The meeting was addressed by the human rights lawyer, Imran Khan, and the barrister and legal specialist, Flo Krause, as well as by Julia Gibby, who had also prepared evidence to the Justice Committee's inquiry on women in the criminal justice system.

There are 4,133 women in prison and, staggeringly, 224 of them are Muslim. The report calls for a dismantling of the existing female estate, saying it has no relevance to the needs of women in prison. I commend the report to the House and hope that many noble Lords will take the opportunity to read it, as it makes a harrowing case about the level of misogyny against women in prison. Women serving the end of their sentences at an open prison were surveyed by Kazuri, which identified consistent gaps in provision in training and educational opportunities.

In the current climate of privatisation of public services, the recent probation service announcements and the building of yet more Titan prisons, women are punished far more heavily in prisons that lack trained staff. Kazuri's report states that underfunded privatised education and resettlement departments are ill equipped to facilitate resettlement and rehabilitation.

We must ensure that there is no further replication of the Work Programme, which has not been a successful example of large private sector companies working with the smaller social enterprises and charities, which walked away. I hope that the Minister will say how the Government intend to work with smaller companies and organisations to deliver more ethical and appropriate services, where large-scale organisations and providers have thus far failed.

It is alarming that, according to the charity Women in Prison, 87% of women who are serving custodial sentences have been victims of violence. According to the Chief Inspector of Prisons, HMP Holloway, which I have visited, no longer offers any courses in understanding domestic violence for the women prisoners.

While the Government are making strides generally to bring violence against women to a higher level on the policy agenda, this must be reflected in the prison estate. If women are not empowered to deal with the impact and long-standing trauma of prison, they will be released and simply fall back into cycles of abuse and-inevitably-crime, to which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has eloquently referred.

As a Parliament committed to rooting out violence against women, we cannot leave women in prison out of this equation. Interestingly, the noble lord, Lord McNally, in response to a Question from my noble friend Lady Corston, agreed to yet another review when asked whether custodial care and offender management should be organised to meet gender-specific requirements. The Corston report is the most comprehensive review of women in the criminal justice system. It seems perverse that this universally accepted framework to look at the needs of women across the raft of ministries and statutory duties appears to have been sidelined by this Government.

I respectfully submit that the time for reviews is over. There have been numerous reports on and reviews into the plight of women in the criminal justice system, and I urge Her Majesty's Government to look at the wealth of evidence collated by the Justice Committee as a result of its recent inquiry. Kazuri's submission to the Justice Committee says that more women than men lose their homes and children as a result of their incarceration, and that more children and public services are affected in profound ways by the incarceration of women. Some 17,000 children suffer every year because their mothers have been placed in custody. Will the Minister say how the Government intend to tackle the disproportionate inequalities faced by women in the criminal justice system?

I submit that the eradication of inequality is not synonymous with treating everybody equally. This is both disingenuous and deeply flawed. It is disingenuous because it gives supremacy to a concept that few would be hard pushed to criticise-namely, upholding the prima facie eradication of inequality-without actually and actively giving weight to evidence and outcomes. It is also deeply flawed because the criminal law and indeed equalities law do not require that criminal offences, maximum penalties and the principles of sentencing should be the same irrespective of the sex of the offender.

When it comes to women offenders, we know what needs to be done. Small alternatives to custody units, intensive therapeutic interventions and the increased use of community-based sentences have all shown tremendous results in reducing reoffending in women and are far less expensive. Can the Minister tell me and the House what we are waiting for and when the directive will be announced to make the seemingly obvious happen?

An Open Letter to The Justice Secretary

An Open Letter to the Justice Secretary, the Right Honourable Ken Clarke QC 

Dear Justice Secretary

We the undersigned are writing to urge you to give higher priority to and address the specific resettlement, rehabilitation and re-offending  issues of women   in the criminal justice system from a gender based perspective.

In spite of encouraging overtures in the initial Green Paper “Breaking the Cycle”  published in November 2010, which promised to address  diversion sentences for all but the most dangerous female criminals, women have slipped off this Government’s agenda once again.

Much consultation was undertaken around  the questions pertaining to women in the Green Paper and many female-specific services encouraged you to deal  differently with women and the reasons they commit crime. However, in subsequent drafts of the White Paper currently going through the House of Lords , now called The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) , these paragraphs have been dropped and the consultation ignored.

We ask you to reconsider as a matter of urgency the provision of a Women’s Justice Commission to address:

·         The economic impact of incarcerating women. The cost of keeping a woman in custody is in excess of £56,000 per year. The average cost of a community sentence is £750 - £1000. Community Sentences have consistently delivered better outcomes in reducing reoffending in women. The long term cost to society of a woman with a one year prison sentence is over £10million over ten years. 

·         The mental health needs of female defendants, and the opportunities provided by community based services to deal with lifelong trauma, discrimination and victimisation. Research shows that 67% of women in prison have at least one identifiable mental disorder. Diversion was promised as a joint initiative with the Department of Health in April 2011, but not enough has been done to effect change or reflect this in policy.

·         The provision of safe bail accommodation. Over half of women entering custody each year do so on remand. These women spend an average of four to six weeks in prison and nearly 60% do not go on to receive a custodial sentence. The need to provide alternatives to remand for Magistrates when considering defendants’ bail applications  has been identified by the Women’s Justice Task Force and the Magistrates’ Association,

 Yours the undersigned

327 petitioners including  Anna Bird, The Fawcett Society, The National Association of Women’s Organisations (NAWO),  Vivienne Hayes, Women’s Resource Centre, Sara Llewellin, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Dr Susie Orbach,  Jean Ritchie QC,  The Bromley Trust, Lady Susan Conway,   Bianca Jagger,  Rachel Cornish,  Wendy Cranmer,  Bristol Feminist Network, Dr. Paula Wilcox , Flo Krause , Polly Sampson, Lynne Franks
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/women-in-the-criminal-justice-system.htm l

Genderproofing LASPO

Based on an event that took place in London in September 2011, Kazuri asked  Baroness Joyce Gould to propose an amendment into LASPO, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, in the House of Lords.  We are grateful to her and to Baroness Corston for  reviving the issue of the inherent inequalities in the law and propsed and existing policy, as it affects women in the criminal justice system. Our deep thanks to Imran Khan, Vivienne Hayes, Jonathan Aitken,  Eoin McLennan Murray and Mark Jonson , Fawcett Society, Barrow Cadbury, Garden Court Chambers and the Women's Resource Centre as well as the the many others who have signed the open letter to the Justice Secretary. 

Thousands of women will be sent to jail needlessly if new criminal justice legislation is allowed into law in its current form, a group of cross-party peers warn this weekend ahead of a vote in the House of Lords.

A new Ministry of Justice bill on sentencing must be changed radically to take account of women, they say, if the Government is to reduce the growing number of women being given custodial sentences. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishing Offenders Bill (LASPO), which currently contains no reference to women offenders in the entire document, will shepherd more women into a prison system designed for men, critics claim.

More than four thousand women, or five per cent of the prison population, are currently held behind bars - a number which has increased by nearly a third in the last decade. But the Government's 'gender blind' approach to offenders mean women are being sent into a justice system that is failing them, according to the group of peers, who stress that most of them should not be going to prison at all.

At least two new clauses to the bill will be tabled in the House of Lords tomorrow [Monday], aimed at improving leadership and accountability for women in the justice system. They will include a proposal to establish a Women's Justice Commission and a plan to set up a national cross-departmental strategy on women offenders, which would produce an annual report to Parliament. The Scottish Executive agreed to set up a Commission with a view to reduce women offenders last year, when it emerged that the female prison population north of the border had doubled in the last decade.

Baroness Jean Corston, Labour peer and author of the Corston Review – a 2007 report into vulnerable women in the criminal justice system, said it is "extraordinary" that the coalition put nothing in the LASPO bill about women, while disbanding the cross-departmental criminal justice women's unit in Parliament. "It shows the Government's insensitivity in relation to women," she said. "If we treat people all the same in the prison system, that means we treat everyone as if they were men. It is blindingly obvious to me that most of these women should not be going to prison."

Critics of the current proposed legislation stressed that most women serve short sentences for less serious offences – almost two thirds of all women sentenced to custody between 2010 and 2011 were serving six months or less and over a third were serving sentences for theft and handling stolen goods, according to Ministry of Justice figures. Up to 25 per cent of new female prisoners were in jail last year for breaching community orders or the terms of their release licenses.

Former chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales and crossbench peer, Lord Ramsbotham told the IoS that the current prison system was "broken". "If we are going to have proper treatment and conditions for women in the justice system, someone must be accountable and responsible for making that happen; there is nobody in charge at the moment," he said. "If this Government wants a 'rehabilitation revolution'... then the revolution affecting women must be designed in a way that is appropriate to them."

The proposed amendments draw inspiration from the Corston review, which recommended replacing existing women's prisons with small custodial centres around the country and providing community-based alternatives to custody. Each year almost 18,000 children are separated from their mother by imprisonment and around one third of women lose their homes, according to the Prison Reform Trust.

More than "15.6m was invested by the Labour Government in 2009 in community provision for women offenders, with more than "10m awarded to women's centres across the country. The coalition has provided a one-off funding package of "3.2m to keep all but three centres running this year and a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said they are "determined to tackle offending among women."

"The justice system must represent both men and women fairly but we are committed to addressing the particular needs of women to ensure fair treatment through the system, and effective rehabilitation for women who offend," the spokesperson said.

Baroness Vivien Stern, a crossbench Peer and senior research fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College, London, said women have been experiencing "injustice" and "inequality" in the prison system for decades. "The bill is a great opportunity to have a good discussion about it and hold people to account, but it doesn't always come down to legislation - it is about whether someone is actually going to tackle the situation or not."

The cost of a women's prison place is higher than a man's at an average of "56,415 per year. By contrast, an intensive community order could cost up to "15,000, according to the Prison Reform Trust. Director Juliet Lyon called the absence of women-focused policy in the bill, a "glaring omission in law and government oversight."

Amendment proposed for he Armed Forces Bill, diversion and assessment

Amendment 24

Moved by Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

24: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause-

"Procedure on arrest for substance abuse, violence against the person or damage to property

After section 74 of AFA 2006 insert-

"Procedure on arrest for substance abuse, violence against the person or damage to property

(1) If a person subject to service law-

(a) has been arrested on suspicion of committing an offence,

(b) would be the person's first offence, and

(c) the offence is related to substance abuse, violence against a person or damage to property,

prior to any decision as to charge, the prosecuting authority shall consider diverting the person for specialist services to assist with substance abuse and mental health treatment either in the community or through existing services in Her Majesty's armed forces.

(2) The prosecuting authority shall also commission and obtain a psychiatric assessment of the arrested person in order to assess that person's needs and manage that person safely.

(3) No decision to charge the arrested person shall be made at the time of arrest and such a decision shall take place only when the prosecuting authority has consulted the specialist services involved and reviewed the psychiatric assessment.

(4) The above conditions do not apply unless, at the time of arrest, the arrested person was serving in Her Majesty's armed forces.""

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: My Lords, I know that the hour is late and I am grateful to the Committee for allowing me to move this amendment at this time. The basis of the amendment is to identify people serving in the Armed Forces who commit offences while fuelled by drugs or alcohol, and who therefore have related underlying mental health problems. There is a duty of care on the Ministry of Defence to afford special consideration to those people whose alcohol abuse or drug treatment has come as a result of their experience and to put them into appropriate programmes as soon as possible, preferably before any charging decision is made.
In civilian life, at the discretion of the police or the Crown Prosecution Service, there is the opportunity to permit a defendant to go into a treatment programme in the community rather than go before the magistrate and get a criminal record. The idea behind this amendment is that the Armed Forces covenant, which is the basis behind much of what we have been addressing today and is so important, in no way could inadvertently disadvantage someone in the forces.
The way in which military court services operate means that in-depth access to the defendant's circumstances sometimes may not come to light. Therefore, mental health and substance misuse issues can be missed and could even be exacerbated with disastrous consequences in the long term. Sadly, there are stories of really frenzied attacks and incidents that have been fuelled particularly by alcohol. An SAS veteran, Chris Ryan, pointed out that it is often 10 or 15 years after people have left the Armed Forces that they reach their lowest point.
The underlying premise of the amendment is that if you can pick people up early and treat the root cause when they are exhibiting the early symptoms of drug and alcohol misuse, you would prevent a long-term problem later. The Armed Forces operate a parallel structure of community mental health teams, so the infrastructure is in place. In his report of 2010, Fighting Fit, Dr Andrew Murrison MP noted that the linked issue of alcohol abuse is significantly associated with service in the Armed Forces and there is evidence that it is more common among combat veterans. This is not a small problem-it is one that needs to be addressed. It has been estimated that up to four out of five cases where military personnel have been involved with criminal activity may be fuelled by alcohol and drugs, and that they would not have committed the offences if it had not been for the excessive use of these substances.
There is an emerging problem in Afghanistan where heroin misuse is becoming particularly linked to criminal activity among serving personnel. There are community psychiatric nurses and consultant psychiatrists on hand in Afghanistan to deal with this, and there are very good outcomes when they deal with the problems immediately, in contrast to them becoming chronic problems. The US has learned lessons from its experience in Vietnam with drug abuse in particular and has realised that punishment does not actually work because you put these people into civilian life, but that early intervention is particularly helpful. One of the problems is that if people are discharged out into civilian life and do not have the infrastructure support they need, the outbursts and consequent violence often associated with them can injure and traumatise or even possibly kill people who are closest to the person themselves.
It has also been estimated that 25 per cent of all home repossessions are from people with a service background, and there is a suggestion that that may be linked to higher alcohol consumption and spending a lot of money on alcohol, because alcohol consumption is extremely expensive.
The idea behind this amendment is to reflect the reality that we are asking a lot from our troops-we are asking them to risk life and limb-and that some of them will find that the way they cope with the trauma they have experienced is to try to numb themselves using drugs or alcohol, and that when they are really fuelled up like that they then go and commit offences. Unless we intervene rapidly and pick them up we may be creating a lifetime of dependency and problems rather than intervening early. I beg to move.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords, Amendment 24, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, would apply whenever a member of the Armed Forces was arrested for a first offence related to alcohol or unlawful drugs, violence or damage to property. Before it could charge the accused, the service prosecuting authority would have to consult specialist substance abuse and mental health services, and to obtain and take into account a psychiatric report on the accused. The importance of the psychological state of an offender and the appropriateness in some cases of a specialist social or mental health approach instead of prosecution is well understood in both the civilian and service justice systems.
When a case is serious enough to go to the service prosecuting authority, it must consider the evidence available as to whether the suspect had the necessary intent to commit the offence under consideration. It must also consider whether the public and service interests-the interests of justice-make a prosecution appropriate. It is also the responsibility of the service prosecuting authority to keep these issues under review the accused's state of mind and whether continued proceedings are appropriate. The service prosecuting authority is therefore able to review in context its assessment of what the interests of justice require.
It is also the service prosecuting authority's duty to disclose to the defence any facts it becomes aware of which go to mitigate the seriousness of the alleged offence. Where it seems to the service prosecuting authority that the interests of justice are not best served by prosecution, it can, and often does, go back to the chain of command to discuss how the chain of command can help to bring the suspect into contact with specialist services. This often forms part of a discussion on whether administrative action might be more appropriate than prosecution.
In court, in an extreme case, the defence may seek a decision that the accused is unfit to plead. There are special statutory provisions under which the judge advocate will consider and decide such applications. Where an accused is convicted, there are statutory provisions under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 for medical reports and pre-sentence reports. The court must generally obtain and consider a medical report before passing a custodial sentence where the offender appears to be mentally disordered. This is a report on the offender's mental condition made by a specialist medical practitioner. A pre-sentence report must generally be obtained by a court whenever it is considering a custodial sentence for an offender. The aim of such reports is to assist the court in deciding the most suitable method of dealing with the offender. It is made by the probation service and must, of course, be disclosed to the offender. The same requirements apply in both the service and civilian justice systems.
I believe that the current role of the service prosecuting authority in deciding whether to charge is the right one. It should, and does, consider what the interests of justice require, and in particular whether prosecution is appropriate. It does so by taking into account the evidence before it. However, I hope the noble Baroness will accept that it would be going too far to require the service prosecution authority to consult specialist services and obtain a psychiatric report in every case covered by the amendment. To do so would confuse the role of prosecutor and the court. It is right for the prosecutor to have some discretion in whether to prosecute and to respond to what the interests of justice plainly require. However, there is an important boundary to be maintained between that role and the proposed role requiring the prosecution to obtain and weigh expert evidence in every case before it can bring a charge.
Furthermore, the requirement for a psychiatric assessment in all the cases covered by the amendment would be excessive, and even unfair to the suspect. It would involve a delay before a decision was made on bringing a charge even in the simplest case. It would appear to expect, or perhaps require, the suspect to submit to psychiatric assessment even where he or she was not raising any psychological issue and there was no reason to suppose that there was such an issue. In some cases it would be impossible to complete this process within the very tight statutory limits that apply in the service and civilian justice systems to keeping a person in custody before charge. In other words, it would go well beyond what the needs of a fair and efficient system of justice require.
Lastly, it would mean that the procedures before charge, and the role of the service prosecuting authority, were very substantially different from those in the civilian system. We recognise the importance of the psychological and social background of an offender, but I do not consider that there are grounds for such different approaches between the service and civilian justice systems. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: I am most grateful to the Minister for his detailed response to my amendment. I had hoped that the words "shall consider" in the first part of the amendment did not create an obligation.

However, in the light of what he has said, I can see that I do not have the right wording. I wish to read what he has said, possibly discuss the matter with him outside the Committee and then consider what to do. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 24 withdrawn.