Criminal Justice System: Women

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on obtaining this important debate and on his introduction to it. I salute him for his two reports on families which have raised the profile of this most important ingredient in the successful rehabilitation of offenders. I also thank Sarah Tudor for her excellent Library briefing.

My interest in the issue of the needs of women in the criminal justice system goes back to my first inspection as Chief Inspector of Prisons of HMP Holloway in December 1995, which I suspended because there was so much wrong with the treatment of and conditions for women prisoners. Immediately after leaving the prison, I went to the Prison Service headquarters to introduce myself to the director-general and tell him why I had not felt able to complete my inspection.

Having been in the Army, chaired an NHS hospital, been director of international affairs in a private security company and governor of a school, I expected that the Prison Service would have a similar hierarchical governance structure. I therefore asked to see the director of women’s prisons—and was amazed to be told that there was not one. When I asked who was responsible for overseeing the conditions for and treatment of women in every prison in the country, I was told that there was a civil servant in the policy branch. When I asked to whom a governor of a women’s prison could turn to for advice, I was told, “Their area manager”. I said that I thought that area managers dealt only with budgets and asked how many of them had worked in a women’s prison. The director-general admitted that he did not know. I subsequently learned that only one had—as a junior governor.

No other organisation—business, hospital or school—operates without having named people responsible and accountable for particular function. Why should the Prison Service be any different? In addition to a director of women’s prisons, I recommended the appointment of families contact development officers in every prison, as in Scotland—but neither recommendation was implemented. Since then I have lost count of the bewildering number of Ministers or officials, under different titles, who have been made responsible for meeting the needs of women in the criminal justice system. Ministers may have overall responsibility, but they cannot exercise 24/7 oversight of the treatment of and conditions for women—hence the need for a subordinate official.

The history of women’s prisons is littered with examples of good practice developed by a good governor somewhere but never turned into common practice everywhere because nobody was responsible for doing so. If Ministers for Prisons asked why standards in individual prisons zig-zagged so wildly, they would discover that incoming governors are not told what to do, leaving how they do it up to them, but are told how to do things in minute detail, enmeshed in myriad targets and performance indicators. This is the cult of managerialism gone mad. Over the years I have lost count of the number of recommendations for improvement made by knowledgeable people or organisations—such as the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, the Inspectorate of Prisons, the Prison Reform Trust, the Centre for Social Justice and the Fawcett Society—only to have them ignored by Ministers and officials in the Ministry of Justice.

In June 2018 the Government published their long-awaited Female Offender Strategy, which emphasised the need for specialist gender-informed services to assist in supporting women to lead fulfilling lives. Unfortunately, an inability to meet the needs of women in prisons is matched by the absence of services designed to respond to women’s needs in the community. Transforming Rehabilitation, while disastrous for men, was even more disastrous for women because, as the Chief Inspector pointed out in a thematic review of the supply chain, too many small, specialist organisations were squeezed out, as they have been under the so-called dynamic purchase system—introduced, ironically, by the Ministry of Justice after the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, published his first report. Awarding contracts to large organisation has resulted in women’s and family services in particular being lost. I therefore urge the Minister to instruct officials in the Ministry of Justice to review whether the DPS has contributed to this loss.

Female offenders are rightly suspicious of allegedly gender-free services, too many of which turn out to be male-orientated. In addition to being responsible for children, many women offenders have backgrounds of mental ill health and addiction or experience of domestic and sexual abuse, which are best dealt with by services designed for women. Females turn to alcohol or drug abuse for different reasons to males, often seeking solace following domestic abuse. They then face considerable disadvantage because there is too little provision of specialist women’s services, which have a proven track record of providing effective therapeutic and practical help.

As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, says in his reports, many of the solutions to reducing women’s reoffending lie outside the criminal justice system, which should be adapted to respond to this need. Cross-departmental leadership, stronger co-operation between central and local government and ring-fenced funding of certain gender-specific programmes are essential to the delivery of effective community support for women. The Cabinet Office-led Reducing Reoffending Board might satisfy this requirement, provided that its direction is binding on individual ministries.

To conclude, as I began, with governance, I have long recommended the establishment of a women’s justice board, which is in the gift of the Secretary of State for Justice. Its chairman should sit alongside the recently restored directors-general of the Prison and Probation Services and the chairman of the Youth Justice Board on a Minister-chaired executive board which, at a stroke, would inject responsibility and accountability and consistent oversight of the needs of women in the criminal justice system. A women’s justice board could mirror two of the great successes of the Youth Justice Board: the reduction of the number of offenders in prison, and the establishment of a number of highly effective offending teams around the country.

In paying tribute to David Gauke, the departed Secretary of State, for all that he has done during his tenure, perhaps I may recommend the establishment of a women’s justice board to his successor through the Minister. I also ask the Minister why this introduction has been resisted for so long.