Lord Beecham
Main Page: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
My Lords, women’s centres and women’s services in general play an incredibly important role in supporting female offenders, many of whom have hugely complex needs. Over 50% of female offenders were abused as children and 60% experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. I think noble Lords will all agree that female offenders are on average potentially more complex than male offenders and need a wide variety of well-funded support.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, 17,000 children are affected by their mother going into prison and only 50% of them stay in the home where their mother was. Moreover, one in four women sentenced to imprisonment serves only 30 days. Is it not time that the Government and the judiciary looked at the effectiveness of imprisonment for these women, taking into account the fact that there are only 12 women’s custodial establishments? This puts a further geographical distance between the child and the mother. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will act to rectify these difficulties?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Lord will have seen recently that the Lord Chancellor is focusing on short custodial sentences for both women and men. It is important that we increase the confidence of judges and magistrates in community sentences. We are working hard to improve this. The noble Lord is right to say that there are 12 female prisons across the country. The average distance from home for female prisoners is currently 54 miles—down from 68 miles in 2016. We are making progress and some of those numbers will be boosted by certain offenders needing to be far away from home to access specific services, such as psychological services.