Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many women with a North Wales postal address that were held at HMP Styalwere had dependent children in 2017/18 .

111 women who were held at HMP Styal during the 2017-18 financial year had a reported North Wales address and are recorded as having children. The data from Prison-NOMIS, the system from which this information was obtained, only records if the prisoner has children (as of today) and does not state how old the children are or if they are dependents.

Our female offender strategy set out a dedicated approach to supporting female offenders and I am determined to build on this by shifting focus away from prisons to women’s centres with a range of support services, including for substance misuse and mental health problems.

We are investing an additional £5 million over two years on community provision so that, where appropriate, women are given the support they need to address their offending and turn away from a life of crime. Work is also ongoing to improve the quality pre-sentence reports to ensure that sentencers are made aware and can take account of whether an offender is a primary carer.

Note:

• North Wales has been defined as having a reported address within the local authorities of: Anglesey; Conwy; Denbighshire; Flintshire; Gwynedd; and Wrexham.
• Around 97% of prisoners have an origin location - i.e. addresses that are recorded in our central IT system. If no address is given, an offender’s committal court address is used as a proxy for the area in which they are resident.
• This information is included in the data provided in the answer above.
• 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 figure above.