Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on support for women leaving prison.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
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. This has included restricting regimes, minimising inter-prison transfers and compartmentalising prisons into different units to isolate the sick, shield the vulnerable and quarantine new arrivals. A comprehensive regular testing regime of both staff and prisoners is in place and is key in helping to prevent the spread of the virus. Our evidence gathering indicates these measures have had a positive impact on limiting deaths and the transmission of the virus in prisons. We are now working closely with the NHS to support the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations for eligible groups in custody.
On 31 March 2020 the Government announced that it would be considering pregnant women and women on Mother and Baby Units for early release from prison, as part of a wider plan to protect the NHS and save lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prison Governors/Directors are able to consider eligible women for early release based on thorough risk assessment, and subject to secure healthcare pathways and appropriate accommodation, in consultation with partners in community support services. This scheme remains active, and the most recent release was in January 2021.
To support its COVID-19 response, HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has set up Homelessness Prevention Taskforces (HPT) in all probation regions to help find accommodation for offenders upon release. These have been very successful in securing improved accommodation outcomes. We are exploring how the regional HPTs might be a feature of the future probation landscape, ensuring that the specific needs of women are fully considered.
In addition, measures have been put in place across the women’s estate to help reduce the impact of COVID-19 for women in custody and to help plan for their release. Some of these measures, include; additional phone credit per week, enabling contact with their support networks, Through the Gate providers are working to Exceptional Delivery Models offering phone support to all prisoners pre-release.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the End of Custody Temporary Release scheme for (a) pregnant women and (b) women.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The End of Custody Temporary Release Scheme (ECTR) allows risk-assessed prisoners, who are within two months of their release date, to be temporarily released from custody. ECTR was introduced as part of our wider measures to create headroom across the prison estate, to enable us to implement our compartmentalisation strategy. This strategy allows us to isolate those with symptoms, quarantine new admissions and shield those most at risk from Covid-19. Early release is however only one part of our overall strategy towards achieving the headroom. We are also expanding the capacity of the prison estate through temporary accommodation, expediting remand cases and expanding our video court capacity and capability to facilitate timely remand and sentencing hearings.
Public Health England and HMPPS modelling suggests that our strategy is having a positive impact on the risk of infection in prison populations (including the women’s estate).
In addition to ECTR, pregnant women, prisoners with their babies in custody and those defined by NHS guidelines as ‘extremely vulnerable’ to Covid-19 will merit consideration for compassionate temporary release on a Special Purpose Licence.
The Ministry of Justice now publishes a weekly release of Covid-19 related statistics. This includes the number of prisoners that have been released from custody under Covid-19 temporary release schemes. The statistics release can be found here each Friday:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hm-prison-and-probation-service-covid-19-statistics
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the New Futures Network has staff working specifically on the employment of women in and leaving prison; and whether it works with employers in women’s resettlement areas.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The New Futures Network (NFN) has a full-time Employment Broker dedicated to forging partnerships between prisons in the Women’s Estate and employers. These partnerships provide businesses with individuals who are ready to take up work opportunities within industries workshops, as part of workplace Release on Temporary Licence, and employment on release.
In addition, NFN has a Regional Employment Broker working in each prison group division across England and Wales. Regional Employment Brokers work closely with the NFN broker for the Women’s Estate, sharing employment on release opportunities generated in their geographical areas.
NFN is part of HMPPS whose reporting follows an annual cycle. The available information on prisoners working in custody (which includes activity undertaken by NFN) is published in the HMPPS Annual Digest but is not broken down in the way requested. A copy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpps-annual-digest-2018-to-2019
Additional information that provides a breakdown of national employment outcomes by number, location and gender is published in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics. The Employment circumstances table outlines all community outcomes and provides location breakdown in table 2 and gender breakdown in table 4 for an individual’s employment status at the start of a community sentence. A copy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2019
NFN intends to report on their work this financial year.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department plans to publish a report on the work of the New Futures Network including the (a) number and (b) location of job placements, by gender, achieved under that initiative.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The New Futures Network (NFN) has a full-time Employment Broker dedicated to forging partnerships between prisons in the Women’s Estate and employers. These partnerships provide businesses with individuals who are ready to take up work opportunities within industries workshops, as part of workplace Release on Temporary Licence, and employment on release.
In addition, NFN has a Regional Employment Broker working in each prison group division across England and Wales. Regional Employment Brokers work closely with the NFN broker for the Women’s Estate, sharing employment on release opportunities generated in their geographical areas.
NFN is part of HMPPS whose reporting follows an annual cycle. The available information on prisoners working in custody (which includes activity undertaken by NFN) is published in the HMPPS Annual Digest but is not broken down in the way requested. A copy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmpps-annual-digest-2018-to-2019
Additional information that provides a breakdown of national employment outcomes by number, location and gender is published in the Prison and Probation Performance Statistics. The Employment circumstances table outlines all community outcomes and provides location breakdown in table 2 and gender breakdown in table 4 for an individual’s employment status at the start of a community sentence. A copy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/community-performance-quarterly-update-to-march-2019
NFN intends to report on their work this financial year.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to implement the Female Offender Strategy 2018 and support women’s transition back into the community through securing employment.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
The Female Offender Strategy (2018) set out our vision to see fewer women entering the justice system and reoffending; fewer women in custody, particularly on short custodial sentences, with more managed successfully in the community; and a custodial environment that enables rehabilitation. The Strategy contained an ambitious programme of work that will take several years to deliver.
Two years on from publication of the Strategy we are making good progress. Achievements to date include: publication of a new Women’s Policy Framework; roll-out of new training for staff working with women in custody and the community; improvements to the preparation of pre-sentence reports; publication and ongoing implementation of the recommendations in Lord Farmer’s review into family ties for female offenders; undertaken a review of police forces’ responses to our guidance on working with vulnerable women; piloting a new offender management model for women under supervision in the community; commissioning research to inform our policy on BAME female offenders; and a review of the operational policy on Pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units, and Mothers separated from children under the age of 2 in prison, which is due to report shortly.
In the last two years, we have invested £5.1 million of Strategy funding in 30 different women’s services across England and Wales, helping to sustain and enhance existing services, fill gaps in provision, and provide properties for new women’s centres.
The Strategy recognised that work can provide a foundation for a different kind of life for offenders and our funding has supported this approach. For example, the Good Loaf in Northampton received Strategy funding to extend its social enterprise bakery, offering more employment opportunities for female offenders and ex-offenders.
Most recently on 5 May 2020, we announced the investment of a further £2.5m in women’s community services in England and Wales in 2020/21 and that the first site of our residential women’s centre pilot will be in Wales.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in the event that covid-19 lockdown restrictions in prisons are maintained or re-imposed, what steps the HM Prison and Probation Service is taking to ensure that women in prisons are able to access support, education and training services; and if he will extend the use of (a) Purple Visits and (b) other digital solutions to the provision of support services in prisons.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
Since 24 March, prisons have been operating under restricted regimes, to comply with social distancing guidelines. The decision to implement these restrictions was not taken lightly - it was based on public health advice and mirrored the restrictions faced by the whole country, and we know the difficult impact this has on women, and particularly mothers in prison.
But there is no question that the measures helped save lives and, as a result, some prisons are now able to begin easing restrictions. Through the Gate services which provide employment and accommodation support have continued to be delivered, with priority given to those nearing release, and those being released early through the Covid-19 early release schemes.
While formal education and training programmes were temporarily suspended we have worked collaboratively with our partners to develop and provide a range of learning materials and distraction packs that can be used in cell to support continued learning during this period. Now this work is beginning again, and staff are using new ways of working to ensure they are delivered safely in establishments.
Further resources tailored to the specific needs of women are currently in development, with women currently in custody having helped develop them.
Work is currently taking place around future employment with the New Futures Network and within the women's estate a short/medium and long term strategy is being developed looking at how we can address ROTL and employment upon release.
Psychology services have also continued to be available for priority cases and they have been delivered remotely using phone or face-to-face contact where it has been possible to facilitate this.
HMPPS has put a range of digital solutions in place to support the working of the criminal justice system during the lock-down and to support prisoners maintaining contact with family and friends. These include additional video conferencing capability for conducting parole hearings and video calling for prisoners with family and friends
In line with the recommendations of Lord Farmer’s reviews, we have prioritised the rollout of video calling in the women’s estate. Whilst this current video call service is a temporary measure, intended for use whilst contact with family and friends is limited, we are considering the benefits of maintaining these digital solutions in the longer term. This would help meet Lord Farmer’s recommendations and ensure that we have capability to manage any future lock-downs.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Wales on the location of the new residential women's centre in Wales.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
We are working with the Welsh Government, the Secretary of State for Wales and local partners to make sure that the location of our first Residential Women’s Centre (RWC) meets the needs of local women.
My officials have met with the First Minister and I have spoken with the Deputy Minister, Jane Hutt. Further meetings are planned.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the working group established by the then Lord Chief Justice and then Lord Chancellor in January 2016 on problem solving courts has been stood down and its membership retired.
Answered by Wendy Morton - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Problem-Solving Courts Working Group was asked to advise on the feasibility of pilot models and its planned work did not include an implementation stage. The group concluded the workstreams set out in its published terms of reference and has not been reconvened.
There remain barriers to testing or applying the problem-solving courts’ approach in a meaningful way, including upfront resource implications and the need for primary legislation to implement some of the models being proposed, as well as gaps in evidence. However, we are testing and applying “problem-solving approaches”, for example in the testbed sites for on the community sentence treatment requirement protocol and through our support for models applied in Family Drug and Alcohol Courts.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Neath and Swansea East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps the Government is taking to activate the working group established by the then Lord Chief Justice and then Lord Chancellor in January 2016 to implement the problem-solving court model in England and Wales.
Answered by Wendy Morton - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Problem-Solving Courts Working Group was asked to advise on the feasibility of pilot models and its planned work did not include an implementation stage. The group concluded the workstreams set out in its published terms of reference and has not been reconvened.
There remain barriers to testing or applying the problem-solving courts’ approach in a meaningful way, including upfront resource implications and the need for primary legislation to implement some of the models being proposed, as well as gaps in evidence. However, we are testing and applying “problem-solving approaches”, for example in the testbed sites for on the community sentence treatment requirement protocol and through our support for models applied in Family Drug and Alcohol Courts.
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 people who started their custodial sentences in England and Wales in 2018 are in prisons which are over 30 miles from their previous address.
Answered by Robert Buckland
HMPPS is committed to ensuring, where practicable, that prisoners are accommodated as close as possible to their resettlement communities and families. Whilst this is a priority, it is not always possible due to a variety of factors including wider population pressures, or where individuals have specific sentence planning needs which can only be met at certain establishments. Closeness to home is particularly important for those on short sentences or nearing release, where they need to build family ties, secure housing and health services and look for work. These prisoners are prioritised for being held in prisons local to home. As at 31st March 2019, the number of sentenced prisoners who commenced their custodial sentence in 2018 and are located more than 30 miles from their origin location was 8,911. Around 97% of prisoners have an origin location, which is an address that is recorded in our central IT system. If no address is given, an offender’s committal court address, next-of-kin or discharge address is used as a proxy for the area in which they are resident. Those with no recorded origin are typically foreign nationals or those recently received into custody. No address has been recorded and no court information is available for around 3% of all offenders. These figures are excluded from the answer provided. For the purposes of this answer we have identified all prisoners that had commenced their custodial sentence in 2018. Prisoners held on remand, non-criminal prisoners and those that commenced their custodial sentence prior to 2018 (or since in 2019), have been excluded. Recalled prisoners that commenced their original sentence in 2018, and were released and subsequently recalled, and were held in custody on 31 March 2019 have been included. All data are based on the straight line travelling distance between each prisoners current location and their recorded origin location. |