Farmer Review

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on his impressive report. I warmly welcome his recommendations, which I trust the Government will implement urgently. Only by improving the mental health and well-being of people while in prison can reoffending be reduced. I would like to highlight many of the recommendations but time does not permit, so I will just say that the call to make more use of release on temporary licence is welcome. This would go some way in helping to maintain family links and ensure that relationships are nurtured not ruptured.

Although the review’s remit was to focus on the family relationships of men in prison, I would like to highlight the significance of family ties for women who are in prison, especially mothers with dependent children. Too often, women are unlikely to receive visits while incarcerated. They are imprisoned further from home than men. That adversely affects their capacity to maintain relationships and family contact. Research suggests that half of all women on remand receive no visits, compared with one-quarter of men. Prisoners who receive no visits are significantly more likely to reoffend than others who do.

The closure of HMP Holloway is relevant to this debate. The final independent monitoring board report on Holloway stated that women were anxious about moving further from home and worried,

“that their families and children might not be able to visit them as often or at all”.

The closure of Holloway in June 2016 and a significant court realignment have meant that all women sentenced to custody by Greater London courts are sent to HMP Bronzefield in Surrey. Whatever the good intentions behind the closure, it has caused significant disruption and disadvantage to women in London who are given custodial sentences, and to their children and other family members.

Visiting London women in prison, or providing services to them in prison or through the gate on release, is now more difficult and expensive for family, friends and support services. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, recommended in his 1991 report that there should be:

“Better prospects for prisoners to maintain their links with families and the community, through more visits and home leaves, and through being located in community prisons as near to their homes as possible”.


We need to stop sending women to prison on short sentences for non-violent crimes. Approximately 26,000 women are arrested each year in London and 1,200 women were sentenced to immediate custody in 2016. Many of those women returned to London with no homes or jobs to go to, resulting in a high risk of reoffending. The Prison Reform Trust, to which I owe my thanks, has proposed that a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the Holloway site must be reinvested in community services—ideally a woman’s centre providing a range of services including mental and physical health care to vulnerable women. The women’s centre model, recommended by my noble friend Lady Corston in her report a decade ago, represents the most effective and financially sustainable alternative community use. Imprisoning women for non-violent offences not only impacts adversely on them but on their children, 17,240 of whom are separated from their mothers each year.

Women in prison are far more likely than men to be primary carers of children. A prisoner survey found that six in 10 women in prison had, on average, two dependent children. Children with imprisoned mothers are one of the most vulnerable at-risk groups and often experience multiple disadvantages and trauma. Ending the incarceration of women with dependent children will help reduce intergenerational crime.