Women Released from Prison

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for securing this very important debate. I understand that time is short, so I will get straight to the point.

After release, six out of 10 women have no home to return to, nine out of 10 women have no job, and one in two women sentenced to less than 12 months reoffends within a year. That is an appalling record, but, looking at the Government’s policies and decisions, it is clear why women released from prison are let down so badly.

The clearest of the policies affecting women after release is the privatisation of the probation system and the formation of community rehabilitation companies. CRCs have not simplified the provision of services and have done nothing more than reduce the effectiveness of the probation system in preventing reoffending. That has led them to be criticised, rightly, across the political spectrum, including by the Justice Secretary, as not fit for purpose.

The impact of CRCs is specifically felt by female offenders as probation has lost the vital one-to-one support that the Women in Prison campaign sees as crucial to reducing reoffending and securing better services and employment. Instead, the focus is on cheaper group work, which simply fails to provide the same benefits and leaves women without the tailored support that they need. However, rather than address the concerns raised about CRCs, the Government are rewarding failure by awarding them a further £277 million in funding. The decision to privatise probation has also meant an end to the ring-fenced funding for women offenders who leave prison, leaving provision dependent on local commissioning arrangements and creating a postcode lottery of post-release support.

Women are also being let down by the penal system before release, with a shameful lack of support in prisons, which makes it no easier to find homes or employment on the outside. Between prisons, there is significant variation in the quality of training courses, with many failing to offer wide-ranging vocational courses, and many that do nothing to overcome gender stereotypes. Many do not provide enough IT-related courses to teach skills that are vital to obtain employment in the 21st-century marketplace. That provision may be bad, but 70% of women in prison—those serving less than six months—have little to no access to courses at all, leaving them without enough support to find secure employment.

Although recent changes have led to all women’s prisons being labelled as resettlement prisons, progress on shifting the focus is slow and there is no overarching system to help offenders into employment. The housing support provided to offenders after release also varies dramatically between prisons. Although some women may have somewhere to go, the rules surrounding housing, the lack of provision and the absence of joined-up services mean that some do not. Some women may try to get into approved premises, but they are only available for specific offenders and are limited in number. Others may try to secure council housing, but there are shortages and specific criteria. More may attempt to find accommodation in the private rented sector, which is unaffordable, with landlords often unwilling to rent to ex-offenders. More worryingly, women who have suffered domestic or sexual violence may return to their abusive partners. The lack of support for housing is putting those women in grave danger.

What runs through the heart of the rules is a failure to take on board the Select Committee on Justice’s acceptance that women face very different hurdles from men. The Government are doing nothing to provide a distinct approach to the specific needs of female offenders, and are instead continuing with badly managed programmes that are often not fit for purpose in the first place, let alone fit to meet specific needs.

The Government say that they will produce a long-overdue strategy for female offenders. It must be specifically tailored to women’s needs, and not just be a rehash of existing policies with a female spin. It has to look seriously at whether prison is the right place for some women. The many cases in which women reoffend because of the appalling lack of support do not serve the best interests of women or of society.

I want to hear from the Minister what he is doing to ensure that women have access to a greater range of employment courses and that those serving short sentences have access to them, so that they can get a job; what he is doing with colleagues to overturn some of the ridiculous housing rules and biases against female offenders, so that after release they will have a roof over their head; why the follow-up report to the Corston report has been so damning; and what the Government are doing to fully implement the report’s recommendations to prevent women from reoffending. When will the Minister or his colleagues publish their strategy for female offenders? Crucially, what will that strategy entail? Can he assure me that it will look seriously at the range of sentencing options available for female offenders?

Proposed Prison: Port Talbot

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gyimah]

Infrastructure is not just motorway access but the local infrastructure of the area. For a category C prison, which would effectively be a resettlement prison, ease of access to employment is important, so that prisoners can be released on temporary licence and come back easily. It is also important that local people can work in the prison without having to commute long distances, not to mention ease of access for prisoners’ families to visit them. All those things are taken into account when we look at local infrastructure.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I should make it clear that the rules of procedure do not allow for Opposition spokespeople to participate in half-hour debates—they are exactly the same as the rules that apply to Adjournment debates in the main Chamber.

Oral Answers to Questions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is right. About 50% of prisoners have the reading age and numeracy skills of an 11-year-old. If we are to give them a chance in life, we need to sort out education, but we also need to give them employment skills that are valued in the workplace. That is why prison reform, which is at the heart of the White Paper that the Government published last November, is carrying on at pace.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The chief inspectors of prisons and of probation recently issued a devastating report on the Government’s flagship community rehabilitation companies, which stated:

“None of the prisoners had been helped into employment by through-the-gate services”.

Will the Minister commit to an urgent review of the role of CRCs, including their delivery of education and employment services, and will he guarantee that no extra money will be passed on to those private companies until they can be proven to be fit for purpose?

[Mr Gyimah]

The probation reforms that the previous Conservative Government rolled out mean that 45,000 offenders who previously would not have been supervised, because they had been in prison for less than 12 months, are now being supervised. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are challenges with what is a first-generation outsourcing programme. We have an ongoing probation review and extra funds have been invested in the CRCs, but we are still within the funding envelope that was decided at the start of the programme. We are carrying out the review to make sure that through-the-gate and other services operate as was envisaged in the original vision.