Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking in response to the recommendations of the report by the Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison initiative Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison, published in October 2020.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar - Shadow Attorney General
The report by the Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison initiative incorrectly suggests that six in ten female prisoners are released homeless. This is based on a sample of just 116 women from a single prison in 2019. Official statistics published in July 2020 show that 6,185 women were released from custody in the year to March 2020, with 50.8% of them going into secure, long-term accommodation and a further 7% to approved premises. 18.3% (i.e. fewer than 2 in 10) were recorded as being homeless at the point of release.
Nonetheless, too many prisoners, of both genders, are released homeless. We are strengthening our work to prevent homelessness on release by continuing the successful probation Homeless Prevention Teams (HPT), which have supported many homeless service users during the pandemic. We are also engaging with other organisations to develop new initiatives.
We are launching a new accommodation service in Summer 2021, providing up to 12 weeks of basic temporary accommodation for prison leavers who would otherwise be homeless. This service will launch in five of the 12 probation regions in England and Wales: the East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, Greater Manchester, Kent Surrey and Sussex, and the North West. It is our intention to roll out the accommodation provision nationally, pending the Spending Review later this year.
We also continue to ensure that appropriate funding is available to women’s community sector organisations, having invested £5.1 million in the two years following publication of the Female Offender Strategy as well as announcing a further £2.5 million last year to cover the core costs of these organisations. This funding responded directly to the many requests for the Government to act to address financial instability in parts of the sector.
HMPPS has also recently announced the development of Eden House, which will be a new Approved Premises for women in Bristol; it is due to open in June 2021 and will be the first new Approved Premises in over 30 years.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that vulnerable female prison leavers, in particular those with complex needs, have access to safe and secure accommodation immediately on release.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar - Shadow Attorney General
The report by the Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison initiative incorrectly suggests that six in ten female prisoners are released homeless. This is based on a sample of just 116 women from a single prison in 2019. Official statistics published in July 2020 show that 6,185 women were released from custody in the year to March 2020, with 50.8% of them going into secure, long-term accommodation and a further 7% to approved premises. 18.3% (i.e. fewer than 2 in 10) were recorded as being homeless at the point of release.
Nonetheless, too many prisoners, of both genders, are released homeless. We are strengthening our work to prevent homelessness on release by continuing the successful probation Homeless Prevention Teams (HPT), which have supported many homeless service users during the pandemic. We are also engaging with other organisations to develop new initiatives.
We are launching a new accommodation service in Summer 2021, providing up to 12 weeks of basic temporary accommodation for prison leavers who would otherwise be homeless. This service will launch in five of the 12 probation regions in England and Wales: the East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, Greater Manchester, Kent Surrey and Sussex, and the North West. It is our intention to roll out the accommodation provision nationally, pending the Spending Review later this year.
We also continue to ensure that appropriate funding is available to women’s community sector organisations, having invested £5.1 million in the two years following publication of the Female Offender Strategy as well as announcing a further £2.5 million last year to cover the core costs of these organisations. This funding responded directly to the many requests for the Government to act to address financial instability in parts of the sector.
HMPPS has also recently announced the development of Eden House, which will be a new Approved Premises for women in Bristol; it is due to open in June 2021 and will be the first new Approved Premises in over 30 years.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their announcement of 23 January of up to 500 new places for women in prisons, (1) what was the evidence base for this decision, (2) how much each cell will cost, (3) what is their estimate for the additional running costs for these places for each of the next 20 years, (4) what alternative uses these places will be put to in the event they are not needed, and (5) what evaluation they made regarding the effectiveness of this decision compared to investing in women's community groups designed to prevent crime.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar - Shadow Attorney General
Our prison population projections published in November 2020 show that the female prison population is projected to rise by around two-fifths by 2026 (1,300 women) with most of that rise coming in the next two years. Our projections took in to consideration the impact of the planned recruitment of a further 23,400 police officers – the impact of which cannot be ignored. Doing nothing is not an option. It is our responsibility to ensure that those women who need to be in custody are held in appropriate, decent and safe accommodation. The design of the new accommodation is being developed to be trauma-informed and gender-specific with improved outcomes for women. Our design principles include requirements around ensuring suitable visiting spaces are provided, greater in-cell communication options informed by what we have learned from the COVID pandemic, and in open designs the potential inclusion of rooms to support overnight visits for mothers and their children (currently already delivered in two prisons within the women’s estate).
We are currently unable to confirm how much each cell will cost or provide an estimate for additional running costs for the next 20 years. This is in large part as the cells will be a mixture of both open and closed places – and the inevitable variation in ancillaries costs which would need to be taken in to account.
In the event these additional cells are no longer needed, this new accommodation will enable us to close old, poorer quality capacity in parts of the women’s estate. This is also an established aim of the custodial element of our Female Offender Strategy.
We are not investing in these prison places at the expense of women's community services - this is not an 'either/or’ approach. As well as investing in prison places to meet projected demand we are investing approximately £80m in community drug treatment, £70m in accommodation services, and a further £2m to support 38 grassroots organisations doing incredible work steering women away from the criminal justice system. In addition to this, we are developing new Residential Centres for women in the community which is being initially piloted in Wales.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the rate of COVID-19-related deaths in prison; and how any such steps are designed (1) to reduce the level, and (2) to mitigate the impact, of COVID-19 infections amongst women in prison.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar - Shadow Attorney General
The safety of our staff and those under our supervision remains a top priority. We have taken quick and decisive action – backed by Public Health England and Wales – to limit the spread of the virus across all prison establishments, including the women’s estate.
Our measures have included restricting regimes, minimising inter-prison transfers and compartmentalising our prisons into different units to isolate the sick, shield the vulnerable and quarantine new arrivals. A comprehensive testing regime of staff weekly and prisoners on reception and transfer is in place and is key in helping to prevent the spread of the virus. Our experience and evidence gathering provides an indication that these measures have had a positive impact on limiting deaths and the transmission of the virus in prisons. Whilst every death is a tragedy, taking decisive action has meant that the number of deaths we have seen in prisons is significantly lower than approximately 2,700 prisoner’s deaths Public Health England modelled last spring if there were no changes to regimes or counter measures out in place in prisons. We are now working closely with the NHS to support the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccinations for eligible groups in custody in line with those receiving in the community.
Due to the current risk level posed by Covid-19, all adult prisons are currently operating a Stage Four regime, as outlined in our National Framework (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-national-framework-for-prison-regimes-and-services). This involves restrictions to reduce contact between people and therefore reduce the chance of transmission. We are keeping the level of restriction necessary under close review. We must continue to respond in a measured way in line with public health advice to ensure our approach is proportionate and legitimate, as we have done throughout.
A women’s self-harm taskforce has been set up to coordinate and drive forward work aimed at reducing levels of self-harm in the women’s estate which includes the introduction of wellbeing checks for women during Covid-19 restrictions.
Additional training focused on female-specific issues has been deployed for prison officers entering the service, to provide new officers with better understanding of women prison residents. As women make a minority of the prison estate, tailored training for officers working with this group will ensure that officers can be more responsive to their needs.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to enhance the availability of support services, and in particular housing support, for women being released from prison.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar - Shadow Attorney General
HMPPS have developed a national Accommodation Framework that sets out our responsibilities, our partners’ responsibilities and a framework for how to build on success and work together with partners to ensure that offenders can access and maintain settled accommodation that is safe and appropriate for their needs. This framework contains specific aims in terms of women’s access to post release accommodation, including the provision of more places in Approved Premises and more appropriate accommodation through the Bail Accommodation and Support Services (BASS) that are currently run by NACRO.
There are seven Approved Premises (APs) for women who have high risk complex needs covering England and Wales. We are working hard to the expand the geographical coverage of the provision and opened a new women’s AP in London during 2020 and we expect to open a further provision in the south west during 2021. APs support a safe transition from custody into the community and provide a high-level of monitoring and public protection and are staffed 24 hours a day and balance care with control, whilst imposing various constraints on residents’ freedom.
The MOJ has secured £11.5 million to support individuals at risk of homelessness on their release from prison. Following the reintroduction of national restrictions, this scheme has been extended to 31 March and is subject to regular review. Individuals may receive temporary accommodation support up to the 26 May and we have started to analyse the outcomes for different cohorts arising from the interventions, with the intention of publishing a report in Autumn 2021. Seven Homelessness Prevention Taskforces (HPT) have also been set up to help find accommodation for offenders upon release and we are exploring how the regional HPTs might be a feature of future provision, ensuring that the specific needs of women are fully considered.
To reduce reoffending and provide health and wellbeing support, we are launching a new accommodation service, providing up to 12 weeks of basic temporary accommodation for prison leavers who would otherwise be homeless. This service will launch in five of the twelve probation regions: East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, Greater Manchester, Kent Surrey and Sussex, and the North West. All individuals, aged 18 and over, released from prison at risk of homelessness to one of the five selected regions will be eligible. It is anticipated that the new intervention will commence in Summer 2021 and will provide support for approximately 3,000 service users.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that, when convicting women, sentencers consider using community sentences and residential requirements rather than custodial sentences.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie - Shadow Minister (Justice)
The Female Offender Strategy sets out our vision to see fewer women in custody by developing more options for supporting women in the community. Across government, we are investing £5 million of funding over two years in community provision for women. The first tranche of this funding was announced last month, and saw £3.3 million invested in women’s provision, including enhancing existing services, creating new services for women with specific needs, such as domestic abuse, and supporting the development of new women’s centres.
As part of the Female Offender strategy, we also committed to working with local and national partners to develop a ‘residential women’s centre’ pilot in at least five sites across England and Wales. The aim of the pilot will be to develop a robust evidence base about what could be effective, sustainable and scalable models for improving outcomes for female offenders and reducing the numbers and frequency of women entering and re-entering custody on short custodial sentences.
We are making sure the National Probation Service’s pre-sentence reports – which assist the court in making sentencing decisions - offer the courts robust community sentencing options which balance punitive and rehabilitative requirements and set out how women will be supported to comply. This may mean that, in some cases, the courts will sentence a woman to a community order rather than a short custodial sentence.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, what assessment they have made of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group's report Any Lawful Impediment? published on 24 May; and what steps they are taking to ensure the legal recognition of humanist marriage in England and Wales.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie - Shadow Minister (Justice)
The Government welcomes the engagement of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist group and we are giving careful consideration to the findings of the group’s inquiry.