Justice committee hearing, Helen Grant

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On the 26^th of March 2013 City Gateway apprentices attended the justice committee in Portcullis House in the House of Commons where The Right Honourable Helen Grant MP, The justice minister with a special responsibility for women in prison was giving evidence with 2 of her officials, Ian Poree who is in charge of commissioning and Michaels Spurr, the head of NOMS. Members of Parliament including Alan Beith, Steve Brine and Jeremy Corbyn discussed the sentences and treatment of women in prison. Debates in the House of Lords by Lord McNally during the parliamentary passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and by the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice,   Damian Green in the House of Commons had all promised changes in the way women are treated in prison.

Helen Grant admitted female prisoners have different needs from male prisoners as they are much more vulnerable. Also, how community sentences in England and Wales are to be made more female friendly in an effort to keep women out of prison and so that they do not re-offend.

Justice minister Helen Grant wants to cut re-offending rates and offer judges reliable alternatives to custody. She says that vulnerable women offenders need help to break the cycle of crime, abuse and many other difficulties that are facing.

One of the aims that the ministry of justice officials insisted was not to lock up fewer women offenders, but to reduce the number of re-offenders and to offer  credible alternatives to custody   to judges and magistrates.

Helen Grant is setting up a new board of specialists, stakeholders within government across ministries and departments and partners outside government who provide services for women offenders, to address community orders for women and look at other issues such as locating female prisoners near to their families. She also said that mothers should receive good health care and support while they are in prison so that when they are out of prison they can build a relationship with their children. Some of the support that was discussed was that their should be family days out , working with families and  children of offenders, home work clubs so that they mothers/ fathers get time with their children and can be part of their life’s while being in prison. However they will not be getting paid for work or curfew as a punishment.

Another idea Helen Grant and the other MP’s proposed was that the women prisoners should be placed in secure hostels. The minister quoted “It costs £45,000 to keep a woman in prison for one year, while almost 45% of all women released from custody in 2010 re-offended within 12 months, committing more than 10,000 further offences.”

What they said the system does well:

Women in Holloway prison are being prepared for work for example they are writing CVs and learning how to dress appropriately for work , so that after they released  they will have something to do, this will reduces the chances of re-offending with help from eth charity Working Chance.

She said she had visited the women’s diversion centre,  Isis in Stroud in Gloucester  which challenges  women to change their lives around; they are being helped to avoid  domestic violence and build up their self confidence as they think that it will help them not to re-offend.

Things that need more improvement:

They need to identify women and men (segmentation) so that they can be put in specific groups of re-offending as they have specific needs and issues (they have been looking at this area) and these can be addressed. Cathy Robinson a former prison governor is undertaking a review of the entire prison system.

They said that a considerate amount has been done and improved in the last 6 years after the report by Baroness Corston and more to be done.

Our feelings are Mrs. Grant wants to give women opportunities and better support, besides placing them in prison. She says society should help women understand alternatives to crime and allow them to get help dealing with problems that cause them to commit crimes.

( too many prisoners not enough justice ) 



By Parvin Nehar & Shahida Akther

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?

Remembering Anne

Anne ( not her real name) gave evidence to the Justice Committee after Baroness Corston in late December  What a great shame the government in all its wisdom have completely excluded the noble baroness from all discussions about how to deal with women in the criminal justice system when she wrote the most holistic review and call for change. Some things are too important to be blue or red about. Purple is such a good color this season.

Lady Corston tells us that Lord McNally told her that a women's strategy to reduce reoffending would be forthcoming in the New Year.

December 2012
Anne was released from prison two and a half weeks ago. A was a victim of domestic violence for a  number of years. Eventually, she couldn't take it any longer and in an act of violence she killed her perpetrator and ex partner. She was convicted of murder and has just completed an 18 year prison sentence. Whilst still serving her sentence, A  was told she would receive extra support from probation, with a back up probation officer  and given a mentor in the community. The prison resettlement department also said they would help with her  resettlement pathways. Nothing transpired. She was released with a £46  release grant. She still has not  received a single payment  for jobseekers allowance and has to apply for a crisis loan and has spent much of today standing in the cold waiting for a food parcel. She is meant to be supported by a Stonham project where she resides  in  Kent however in spite of receiving additional funding for working with and housing Allison who is considered a high risk to the public and has MAPPA status, they are unable to assist with her most basic needs. She had to beg another resident of the project to lend her a tea cup to make a cup of tea on Friday. A  has no money for food. 

Whilst serving her sentence, A  says she was not supported by any of the  offending  behavior management courses or those meant to help her understand why she committed the crime and they were all about apportioning blame. 

Due to the nature of the crime she has had to take full responsibility for her actions in order to  get her parole. This defies any  evidence that it is helpful for women who kill, for reasons of domestic violence should be further punished in an already punitive system. The system forces women into assuming the role of the perpetrator  when in fact they are victims of domestic violence.   If she did not accept it was murder and not the tragic consequence of  a domestic violence situation, she would still be inside. A 's recent experiences, the lack of joined up resources and particularly the denial of any public agency including the prison service and the probation services  to take responsibility and work with her in a holistic fashion demonstrates, right now, how the criminal justice system continues to fail women offenders. A has just been informed her back up probation officer has been reassigned so now she has only one and she is only seeing probation only once a week although she did ask to be seen twice a week. None of the support or services which were promised to her have been made available and she is frankly, quite desperate to get her life back on track.  

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This is just one of the horror stories of women who are being failed by the criminal justice system. A system designed by men, for men, to punish and  mete out retribution. 

"Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

So we did it. We begged bullied and roasted you till you came up with over  two thousand pounds for our Buzzbnk campaign which you can see here, to put a woman who has suffered violence and trauma into decent sustainable housing.

The woman is in her late forties and recently deported from the Caribbean having served a prison sentence for overstaying her Visa. She has recently undergone a mastectomy  and recovering, we'll know the outcome of the surgery in 7 or 8 weeks.

The first step is to provide decent housing and tomorrow she is coming  to see us and meet our advocate who will work with her for the next twelve months to secure the support and services she needs and in order to begin and sustain her desistance journey.

Thanks again for your amazing support. You can still contribute via PayPal or standing order to help cover the costs of the one to one support. The first milestone reached on Buzzbnk enables Kazuri to pay a month's rent and  deposit to secure sustainable housing for her.

We'll keep you updated about her progress.

We got this from one of our favorite people this morning, accelerated art trauma practitioner, Marion Green.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." 
source:last two lines Goethe from Faust, the rest is attributed to him.


Thank you for your support!
K Team
London 2  January 2013.

Racism and Misogyny in the Criminal Justice System

Here are the virals from the event in September chaired by ex prisoner ex Minister Jonathan Aitken, Imran Khan, Eoin McLennan Murray and others featuring questions from women serving prison sentences. Women, the unheard voices in the Rehabilitation Revolution

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

Dear Mrs Home Secretary, please stop telling racist lies.

Conservative catflap: the truth behind Maya and the deportation row

Spat between two Conservative cabinet ministers rests on a judge's light-hearted remark

Theresa May Home Secretary, winging it. bad hair dye day

via @Guardian

An immigration judge's light-hearted remark about a cat no longer having to fear adapting to Bolivian mice lies behind the outlandish Conservative party conference claim by home secretary Theresa May. Her assertion that a Bolivian student was an illegal immigrant who could not be deported because he had a pet cat – called Maya – was one of three examples she cited as justifying her new drive to prevent human rights protection for family life blocking deportations.
The three examples were drawn from a Sunday Telegraph article in June which detailed 102 cases last year in which article 8 of the European convention on human rights – the right to family life – was cited as a reason for stopping the deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. The other two cases involved a violent drug dealer, whose daughter lived in Britain, and a robber who was not deported because he had a British girlfriend. The paper was careful in its report to say the cat was only part of the reason that stopped the Bolivian student's deportation. May's downfall was caused by her failure to make such a qualification; she pinned the whole thing on the cat.
But the judgment delivered by senior immigration judge Gleeson on 10 December 2008 makes clear that while the cat featured in the case, it was actually a dispute about an article 8 rule then in force that said if someone was settled in Britain with an unmarried partner for more than two years without enforcement action, then they had an automatic right to stay.
Ronan Toal, the barrister in the case, told the Guardian that it wasn't even about a deportation but an application to stay in Britain and the cat had only been mentioned in passing as evidence of the long-term relationship.
"It's totally cynical. It's specious to rely on a completely distorted and inaccurate account of one decision of one tribunal. If that's the best they can do, then that just reveals the poverty of their thinking about human rights in general and article 8 in particular,'' he said.
The judgment makes clear that the joint ownership of the cat was not the crucial factor in allowing the appeal.
The original judgment does not name the cat. Indeed, it goes as far as to omit the cat's name, which led the Sun to print a picture of a cat with its eyes blacked out when it reported the story. It appears that Judge Gleeson's throw-away line at the end of his judgment "that the cat need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice" may have fuelled some of the tabloid myths that have stemmed from the case.
At a later appeal, when the cat was named as Maya, the Home Office argued that too much weight had been given at the earlier hearing on the impact on the student of having to return to Bolivia and leave behind not only his partner but also the jointly owned cat. May was relying on this last night to but even she conceded that the ruling was only "in part" based on the man's ownership of a cat called Maya.
No wonder Ken Clarke was prepared to offer Theresa May good money on Tuesday that nobody's deportation had been refused by the courts solely because they owned a pet cat.

Time to turn feminist Mr Justice Secretary? Theresa May get your Marigolds on.

More tosh ( nasty internal spinning from MoJ policy resistant wonks) about what The Justice Secretary is meant to have said about women and incarceration.

It doesn't tally at all with what he says privately, he conceeds women are "far more messed up than men" when they get to prison and the the prisons "don't know what to do with them". So how does that justify locking them up , when diversion sentences are more successful in cutting reoffending and clearly more cost-effective?

Released from behind the Times paywall.

Mary Bowers and Richard Ford

Last updated June 3 2011 12:01AM

 

Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, is set to reject calls to speed up the closure of women’s prisons, in a blow to penal reformers who want thousands of female offenders to be spared jail. He is also to ignore demands to appoint a “women’s justice champion” with the task of ensuring that the specific needs of female offenders are at the heart of his department’s work.

Mr Clarke’s rebuff to penal reformers will fuel their fears that women offenders are being marginalised in sentencing reforms to be outlined later this month.A report to be published next week is to call for far-reaching reform of justice, with a switch of emphasis away from imprisoning women to developing community-based alternatives.

But Mr Clarke’s insistence that there will be no swift moves to close women’s prisons and his robust response to penal reform groups will delight those Conservative MPs who believe he is soft on crime.
Cuts in police numbers, along with sentencing reforms intended to stabilise and then reduce the prison population, are provoking fears that the coalition is soft on law and order.

David Cameron will seek to reassure the public and his party that the Government has a tough approach to crime when he makes a speech on law and order later this month. He will speak shortly before Mr Clarke unveils proposals to overhaul sentencing, including plans to divert men and women suffering from mental health, drug and alcohol abuse away from the criminal justice system and to health facilities for treatment.
Penal reformers claim that thousands of female criminals currently jailed for non-violent crimes should not be sent to jail but punished in the community.

The latest figures show that just under 45 per cent of women sent to jail in 2009 were convicted of theft, fraud and forgery offences, compared with 21 per cent of men. Just 14 per cent of women jailed were convicted of violence against the person, compared with 21 per cent of men.

Andrew Neilson, assistant director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said that Mr Clarke could take steps to reduce the number of women in jail without alarming the public.

“He could target this area as a way of reducing the prison population. Cutting the number of women in prison is much easier to sell to the public than men, particularly as so many women are in prison for non-violent crimes.”

Penal reform groups believe that the momentum for reforming the way women are dealt with in the justice system has slowed since Labour lost the general election. Under Labour, there was a female prisons minister who also championed women’s justice.

There are also fears over the future funding for a network of pioneering centres set up to help overhaul the way female offenders are treated. They were seen as the core element of a strategy to keep women out of prison and able to remain in their communities.

The Government gave £15.6 million over four years to trial centres around the country when they were piloted in 2007. Last month, the Government added £1.7 million to the £1.5 million provided by charities to ensure the survival of 26 centres, after fears that several were facing closure.

Crispin Blunt, the Prisons Minister, made clear that the Justice Ministry contribution was a “one-off” and there are fears that charities will be unwilling or unable to bear the financial burden of keeping the centres open.
Early findings from the centres suggest that they have a better record of turning women away from a life of crime. Anawim centre in Birmingham reported last year that 3 per cent of women using the unit had reoffended, compared to 54 per cent of those in jail.

The centres also represent a much cheaper and more effective way of dealing with female offenders. It costs, on average, about £54,000 to keep a woman in prison for a year compared with between £10,000-15,000 for a community order.

A Ministry of Justice official said last night that the Government remained committed to developing policies addressing the particular needs of women offenders.

Corston? What Corston?

Such promise after the findings of the Corston Report, which the coalition government has decided to ignore.  It wouldn't be so bad, if they had an alternative agenda, but the longer the White Paper to Breaking the Cycle is delayed ( After the Health Reform Bill listening excercise, some time late summer) , the longer women are locked up unfairly and with devastating consequences. The cost of locking up one woman for one year, in related court, police, housing, welfare and other societal costs over ten years exceeds £10million.

Get your cheque books out, then. This round's on you, Mr Taxpayer.


When will they DO something?

Baroness Jean Corston