What is the government’s strategy for female offenders?

For three years the Government has been promising to publish a strategy to steer its work on female offenders. The Justice Select Committee says the government’s work on women in the criminal justice system is ‘inadequate’. The committee is right. We’re now nearer the next general election than the last and we’re still hearing promises from ministers but seeing no action in reality.

The arguments for making a special effort with female offenders are worth repeating. Over 70% of the women in prison are there for a non-violent offence. They pose a serious risk of self inflicted harm whilst inside, accounting for nearly one third of incidents last year despite being only 5% (one twentieth) of the prison population. They are three times as likely as women on the outside to suffer depression or other mental health difficulties, and over half have suffered domestic or other abuse. Women leave almost 18,000 dependent children on the outside. After leaving prison half of female offenders are locked up again in a matter of months. As well as being a scandalous waste of lives this is a shockingly wasteful and expensive way of maintaining the crime rate.

It costs up to £3,750 to keep a woman in prison for a month. It is estimated it will cost the state over 17 million over the next ten years to deal with the consequences for her children.

We need to do much better than warm words and wasted opportunities. The Government needs to make sure female offenders take responsibility for their lives and are compelled to make changes that will stop them committing crime. There is no mystery about how this can be done, dozens of organisations up and down the country have proven success in tackling the root causes of female offending such as drug addiction, mental ill health, homelessness, alcohol abuse and violent relationships. Baroness Corston’s seminal 2007 report on women in the criminal justice system made the case for targeted, community-centred solutions to female offending. Study after study show us that women helped to get back on track and take charge of their chaotic lives are far less likely to commit future crimes.

In Manchester, Women MATTA is a project that works with local women who have just left prison, as well as women who are at risk of ending up there. Diversion to the scheme ensures women are monitored and challenged to face up to the problems that got them there. The women you might meet here are tackling drug misuse, moving on from abusive relationships and facing up to debt troubles. For an offender who was homeless after being kicked out by an abusive partner, the programme offers housing advice rather than another temporary stay under a prison roof.

But projects like this are sparsely and randomly dotted across the country. Centres struggle financially from year to year, and many women who need it can’t get the support because they happen to live in the wrong area. Some centres are still on interim funding and do not know how long they can continue, and the preventative work that these centres do is looking likely to be scrapped by the Government, leaving communities unnecessarily open to crime and the cost of dealing with it. A postcode lottery and financial instability mean work to stop women offending is not happening where it is needed.

Anyone who has had to live next door to a woman struggling to manage her own and often her children’s lives will know the noise, the fear of violence and the exhaustion endured by local communities. There are services that work, that challenge and prevent the escalation of disorder into crime. Where these services work best they also save us money that could be better spent almost anywhere else.

This will only happen if the Government chooses to act. So far a half hearted statement on female offenders, published only after the department was challenged by the Justice Select Committee, has failed to make any difference. Where it matters, the government are ignoring opportunities to improve services, as their plans to contract out probation services without specific concern for women’s services clearly show. Labour have pledged to establish a Women’s Justice Board if elected, to roll out best practice and get a handle on reoffending. Tackling these crimes may not be near the top of the to-do list for the government, but doing so will save us all some money and be a welcome end to the misery of those living nearby.

Jenny Chapman Shadow Prisons Minister