Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women sentenced to prison in 2017 for summary non-motoring received sentences of (a) 0 to 1 months, (b) 0 to 3 months, (c) 0 to 6 months, (d) 0 to 12 months, and (e) 12 months or more.

The number of women sentenced to custody for public order, miscellaneous crimes against society, fraud, summary motoring offences and with offence not recorded who received a custodial sentence of 0-1 months, 0-3 months, 0-6 months, 0-12 months and 12 months or more, in 2017 can be found in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Number of women in prison in 2017 by selected offence type and sentence length.

Note: There were no women sentenced to prison in 2017 whose offence was not recorded.

On 27 June we published our strategy for female offenders, which sets out the Government’s commitment to a new programme of work for female offenders. This is driven by our vision, which includes wanting to see fewer women in custody, especially on short-term sentences, and a greater proportion of women managed in the community successfully. We have committed to an investment of £5m in community solutions which will support the develop of whole system approaches to produce better outcomes for women either in or at risk of entering the criminal justice system.