Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the timetable is for the publication of the report on the National Review of Health and Social Care in Women’s Prisons.
Answered by Damian Hinds
The National Women’s Prisons Health and Social Care Review, commissioned jointly by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and NHS England, is due to report in Spring 2023. The scope of the review includes women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare in prison.
Following a policy review, we began collecting information on the number of babies born to women in the prison estate in 2020-21. National data on pregnancy and births, and on Mother and Baby Units, are now published annually in the HMPPS Annual Digest.
Data on the number of women who are pregnant or who are mothers of babies under two years old who have entered the prison system on remand is not collected or held centrally. Information on prisoners’ caring responsibilities and children living in the community is monitored locally by prison Governors and Directors, to ensure appropriate support can be provided to offenders and their families.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average sentence length was for (a) women and (b) men sentenced to prison in each month since January 2021.
Answered by Baroness Maclean of Redditch
The Ministry of Justice publishes these figures on an annual basis, by quarter, on the GOV.UK website in the Outcomes by Offence data tool (MS Excel Spreadsheet, 21 MB) as part of the Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2021 publication published in May 2022. Figures for 2022 will be published in subsequent releases of the data.
Please see the accompanying table, and associated notes, for a breakdown by month for the year 2021. These figures are not routinely published as monthly averages can be influenced by cyclical factors that need to be considered when considering average custodial sentence length (ACSL) – for example, ACSL will depend on the mixture of offences sentenced within that month. Monthly averages will also be more likely to fluctuations due to relatively small volumes of offenders in each period.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will set a numerical target for the commitment in the Female Offenders Strategy on reducing the number of women entering prison.
Answered by Rob Butler
We remain committed to the aims in the Female Offender Strategy (2018) of seeing fewer women offending and reoffending; fewer women in custody, especially on short sentences, with more managed effectively in the community; and better conditions for women in custody that support effective rehabilitation.
As we have an independent judiciary, setting a numerical target as proposed is not appropriate and may have unintended consequences. We are working to ensure that interventions and pilot projects are, where possible, evaluated so that we can understand their impact on the numbers and make-up of the population.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many of the 500 new prison places for women will be open provision.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The exact numbers and mix of new open and closed facilities are being finalised subject to site surveys and planning and, when agreed, will be released at the earliest opportunity.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women’s prison cells will be brought back into use through the £21 million in funding allocated to refurbishing the women’s prison estate, in each of the next five years.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
We are delivering high quality facilities in women’s prisons including providing up to 500 new places. In addition, we will continue to invest a significant proportion of our custodial capital and resource budgets received through Spending Review ‘21 on improving the condition and operational integrity of existing accommodation. The final allocation is determined through an internal process, currently underway.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when his Department plans to publish its one-year on report on the national concordat on women in contact, or at risk of contact with the criminal justice system.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Government remains committed to publishing an update on delivering the approach and principles in the Concordat. We are considering the recommendations of the January 2022 report by the National Audit Office and the current Public Accounts Committee inquiry on Improving Outcomes for Women in the Criminal Justice System before finalising the report. We expect to publish by summer.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women known to be pregnant from July 2020 to March 2021, as reported in the HMPPS Annual Digest 2020/21, were (a) sentenced (b) on remand, at the point at which they were first recorded as being pregnant.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The specific information requested is not collected centrally, and therefore could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
On 20 September the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published a new policy on pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units and maternal separation from children up to the age of two in women’s prisons, which contains a range of reforms for improving the care of pregnant women. The policy requires increased both local and central data collection on self-declared pregnant women in our care, to ensure individuals are receiving the relevant support and to ensure policy is more informed.
We publish some of this data in the HMPPS Annual Digest of statistical information. We published the first of these on 29 July 2021, which showed that during the period July 2020-April 2021 an average of 26 women self-declared as pregnant each week. Data on how many of these women were subject to Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) or self-declared as pregnant on first reception into custody is not centrally collected, however this data is reviewed locally.
This is a dynamic area of policy and we will continue to consider our central collection as it develops.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women known to be pregnant from July 2020 to March 2021, as reported in the HMPPS Annual Digest 2020/21, were under Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) monitoring for risks of self-harm and/or suicide.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The specific information requested is not collected centrally, and therefore could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
On 20 September the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published a new policy on pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units and maternal separation from children up to the age of two in women’s prisons, which contains a range of reforms for improving the care of pregnant women. The policy requires increased both local and central data collection on self-declared pregnant women in our care, to ensure individuals are receiving the relevant support and to ensure policy is more informed.
We publish some of this data in the HMPPS Annual Digest of statistical information. We published the first of these on 29 July 2021, which showed that during the period July 2020-April 2021 an average of 26 women self-declared as pregnant each week. Data on how many of these women were subject to Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) or self-declared as pregnant on first reception into custody is not centrally collected, however this data is reviewed locally.
This is a dynamic area of policy and we will continue to consider our central collection as it develops.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the publication of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s independent investigation into the death of a baby (Baby A) at HMP Bronzefield on 27 September 2019, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of ending the use of imprisonment for pregnant women.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The death of Baby A was a tragedy and we have taken a range of actions with our partners to prevent this from happening again.
Sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary. However, we recognise the additional challenges experienced by pregnant women in prison and we are taking steps to ensure sentencing decisions are better informed by individual circumstances and that there are viable alternatives to custody.
Since the publication of the Female Offender Strategy in 2018, we have invested around £7 million in the women’s community sector to increase sustainability, enhance services and develop new provision, with a further £2.5 million being invested this year.
We are also investing in a range of initiatives that aim to encourage use of robust community sentences including Problem Solving Courts, Community Sentence Treatment Requirements, Electronic Monitoring and a Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) pilot. Specifically, we have developed a PSR checklist for women which ensures that individual circumstances, such as pregnancy, are taken into account.