Maria Jackson, a single mother-of-three, stole a lasagne from Marks and Spencer. Her youngest son was having a friend round for tea. That morning she had discovered that her benefits had been stopped. It was a mistake and they were quickly reinstated. But, temporarily without cash, she stole a lasagne \u2013 and some olives \u2013 so her 13-year-old would not be embarrassed when his friend arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was desperate and literally had no money,\u201d she recalls. When Maria appeared in court she thought she was going to jail. It was her second offence. She had already been convicted for benefit fraud. Struggling to make ends meet, Maria had taken an extra job working night shifts without declaring it. She had done it for a year, over-claiming \u00a340 a week.<\/p>\n
But Maria, who is 49, \u00a0was one of the lucky ones. Some 10,181 women were put behind bars in 2011 and the population of Britain\u2019s women\u2019s prisons has more than doubled over the past 15 years. Maria, however, was sentenced to attend something called the Inspire project, a ground-breaking initiative run by a women\u2019s centre near her home in Brighton.<\/p>\n
Similar projects are being pioneered in Bradford,Glasgow, Calderdale, Worcester and London to find more effective ways of stopping women from offending than the traditional prison system affords. At the centres women undergo a detailed individual assessment and then are given help with a range of problems including drug and alcohol misuse, parenting and budgeting skills, debt, housing and employment problems, anger management, and mental and physical health problems.<\/p>\n
The aim is to address the root causes of crime more effectively \u2013 and more cost-effectively \u2013 than prison. The approach works. The average court-directed order at the Together Women Project in Bradford costs between \u00a3750 and \u00a31000 per woman per year \u2013 compared with the \u00a356,415 a year it costs to keep a woman in jail.\u00a0 It has a compliance rate of 80 per cent. And it has reduced reoffending to less than 10 per cent compared to a national average of 62 per cent.<\/p>\n
Funding for these centres grew out of the recommendations of a major report commissioned by the Government from Baroness Jean Corston in 2007 into how to improve the way the criminal justice system deals with women offenders. \u201cThe vast majority of women offenders are not dangerous,\u201d it said. Only those comparatively few women who are a danger to others need be locked up.<\/p>\n
There was cross-party approval when it recommended fundamental reform which included developing a network of centres to support and supervise more and better punishments in the community. It also recommended improved sentencing and reconfiguring the prison system to close big women\u2019s prison and replace them with smaller units better able to address the re-offending problem. They would also house mothers nearer to home so their children could visit more.<\/p>\n
But though the Government accepted 40 of Corston\u2019s 43 recommendations it has stalled on implementing its biggest reforms. In the five years since the report \u201clittle progress has yet been made,\u201d says the umbrella group of 21 campaign groups in the Corston Independent Funders\u2019 Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone agrees we need fewer women in prison but nothing happens,\u201d says Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust. \u00a0So how has this impasse come about?<\/p>\n
<\/pre>\n***<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Short sentences do not work<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Why are more women in jail? Most of the rise \u00a0comes from a significant increase in the severity of sentences. Just 10 per cent of women convicted of an indictable offence were sent to prison in 1996. A decade later the figure had risen to 15 per cent. \u201cNot since the mid-19th century has our prison system held as many women as it does today,\u201d says the Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen an incredible ratchetting up of sentencing in Britain in the last 20 years,\u201d says the barrister and equality campaigner Helena Kennedy QC. \u201cIt began with Michael Howard [under the Conservatives] but then Labour joined in with a Dutch auction of who could be toughest. It has created a sense among magistrates and judges of what\u2019s expected of them as the press constantly berate judges for soft sentences. Despite the drawing up of sentencing guidelines there\u2019s been a tabloidisation of the whole sentencing process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some types of crime \u2013 particularly centred on drugs \u2013 have increased but, in the main, women are being jailed more often for comparatively minor offences like shoplifting and benefit fraud.\u00a0 They are what Corston called \u201clow level \u2018nuisance\u2019 offending\u201d\u00a0 often driven by the woman\u2019s need to provide for her family or to fund an addiction. A quarter of those jailed had no previous convictions.<\/p>\n
Yet two thirds of the 10,181 women sentenced to prison in 2011 served sentences of six months or significantly less. In 2008, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, 3,338 women were sent to prison for 3 months or less. Another 986 women went inside for less than 4 weeks. And 139 got less than 10 days in jail, sometimes for offences like not paying their council tax.<\/p>\n
Such short sentences are extraordinarily ineffective. They appease those sections of public opinion which demand retributive punishment. But they allow no time for serious work on reform and rehabilitation strategies. \u201cA six week sentence may involve two weeks detox, two weeks to stabilise medication and two weeks to prepare for release,\u201d admits the civil servant Debra Baldwin. \u201cSo there is no time for prison to do much more.\u201d<\/p>\n
And such short sentences are not subject to any form of statutory supervision on release. \u201cMost women offenders leave prison still encumbered by the debt, mental health, or substance abuse problems with which they entered,\u201d says Nick Hardwick. \u201cIt is no surprise that the majority go on to re-offend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed the problem is getting worse. Reconviction rates have risen for women. Short sentences have the worst rate of recidivism; almost two-thirds of those who have served sentences of less than 12 months, are re-convicted within a year of release.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf women are in for selling drugs or sex many go back to it straight away when they get out,\u201d says Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust. \u201cIn the 1990s the reoffending rate was 40 per cent now it\u2019s over 50 per cent. They get more dependent on the institution and less capable of coping outside.\u201d\u00a0 The idea that you have to be tougher on repeat offenders doesn\u2019t work with drugs, adds Helena Kennedy.<\/p>\n
Intensive interventions make a demonstrable difference. In the Mother and Baby Units inside prisons, which can house a total of just 80 mothers at one time, the intensive skills tuition reduces reoffending. At Styal prison in Cheshire Karen Moorcroft, the Children\u2019s Service Manager for the charity which runs the nursery, Action for Children, says: \u201cThe rate of those who return to prison is around 52 per cent in the general prison population but just 15 per cent in the unit.\u201d The reoffending rate for women on sentences shorter than 12 months rises to 62 per cent.<\/p>\n
The same is true with punishment in the community. In South Ayrshire 37 per cent of women offenders breached their community service orders until the children\u2019s charity Barnardo\u2019s\u00a0 introduce parenting, truancy and debt counselling, along with housing and<\/p>\n
employment support. Breaches then dropped by almost two-thirds.<\/p>\n
Many of the women in our prisons are, in Nick Hardwick\u2019s words, \u201crepeat petty offenders, trapped in a cycle of deprivation, disadvantage, drug abuse and crime that the prison system is conspicuously failing to break\u201d. Very short prison sentences which served little purpose except to further disrupt sometimes already chaotic lives. \u201cPrisons \u2013 particularly as they are currently run,\u201d he says, \u201care simply the wrong place for so many of the distressed, damaged or disturbed women they hold.\u201d.<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/p>\n
How to cut the cost of prison<\/strong><\/p>\n
The Inspire project inBrightonworks because it understands that. \u201cWe are working with people who have been though a lot of trauma in their own lives and quite often the women are very vulnerable,\u201d says Sara Hughes, one of the Inspire case workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they have been convicted of a crime but often they are victims of crime themselves.\u201d Many also live in poor circumstances. \u201cThe project is really about helping people break out of that cycle of crime, substance misuse, domestic violence and homelessness. Sending them to prison would only compound their problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not special pleading. National statistics offer shocking confirmation. More than half of women in UK prisons have suffered domestic violence. One in three has experienced sexual abuse.\u00a0 One in four has been in care. Their levels of education are very low: 74 per cent left school at 16 or before.\u00a0 They have less than half the academic qualifications of the general population. Almost half have not worked in the past five years.<\/p>\n
To all that must be added extremely high levels of drug use:\u00a0 almost 60 per cent have used drugs daily in the 6 months before prison. Their physical and psychological health is poor. Almost half the incidents of self-harm in prison are by women, even though they constitute around 5 per cent of the total prison population.<\/p>\n
All the evidence suggests that community sentences are far better than prison at enabling women to tackle the triggers of their criminal behaviour \u2013 such as substance abuse and mental health issues \u2013 while reducing the level of disruption caused to their families. Such problems, said Baroness Corston, \u201care all far more likely to be resolved through casework, support and treatment than by being incarcerated in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brighton Women\u2019s Centre project is run by five charities which work closely with the probation service. The probation officers suggest to local magistrates and judges which women might benefit from Inspire as an alternative to prison.
\nTo be considered the women must be classed as a low risk to the public.<\/p>\nAnd yet Inspire is not a soft option. \u201cWe have had people who have done prison a number of times and been unfazed by it,\u201d says Helen Race, a project case worker. \u201cBut when they have had to stop and reflect on their actions they have found this very challenging. Unlike prison it requires women to address the causes of their crime, the consequences of their actions, their role within the community and that \u00a0it could change.<\/p>\n
Mother-of-three Sue Martin, 41, was referred toBrighton women\u2019s centre after being convicted of benefit fraud. Sue, a nursery worker had worked extra hours over the summer holidays without declaring the extra income. She was prosecuted two years ago for benefit fraud after receiving \u201ca couple of hundred\u201d extra pounds in family tax credits. She was terrified she would be separated by prison from her children, now aged 17, 15 and nine. Instead she was sentenced to pay back the money and attend sessions at Inspire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe project helped me resolve a lot of my problems. My whole personal life was pretty grim at the time. My partner was very abusive and I wanted to leave him,\u201d he says. She had taken the extra work to build a fund to run away. \u201cAlthough the conviction was just awful it is still the best thing that has happened in the long term. A domestic violence case worker here helped me resolve a lot of things. We also worked on my parenting. My daughter was then 13 but because of the situation with my then-partner she had lost all respect for me and was getting into all sorts of risky behaviours. I think that if I\u2019d been jailed my daughter would have ended up following suit. But this project gave me the tools to change my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Corston report similar projects were funded by the Ministry of Justice across the country. But there are not enough of them, nor are they evenly spread geographically. Funding has been cut and the centres stagger from one year to the next financially.\u00a0 Next year funding of such centres will pass from central to local government, says Rachel Halford of the charity Women in Prison, and there is no guarantee that the cash will continue.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em>\u201cWomen offenders are generally a high priority with ministers,\u201d says Debra Baldwin the senior civil servant responsible for women\u2019s prisons in the Ministry of Justice. \u201cIt is a priority to reduce reoffending among women.\u201d<\/p>\n
One big problem, she says, \u201cis that the money for these various services and initiatives come from different pots\u201d The prison system, probation service, Department of Health and local authority social services departments are all involved. \u201cSo a cost in one is not offset by a commensurate saving in the same budget, but in a different budget entirely. That is one of the real challenges on where do you break the cycle of intergenerational crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
What that means is that \u201ccivil servants are back in their comfort silos,\u201d says Baroness Corston, who tired to build links between different Government departments to prevent such budget myopia.<\/p>\n
Such thinking is short-sighted according to the New Economics Foundation which conducted a study of women and the criminal justice system. It concluded that imprisoning mothers for non-violent offences carries a massive cost to the state in extra benefits and unpaid taxes from the diminished life chances inflicted upon the children of prisoners. \u201cIt is difficult to understand what value is being delivered for the billions of pounds being spent in the criminal justice system,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
By contrast there are huge benefits from investing in alternatives to prison. \u201cEven small reductions in re-offending translate into significant savings,\u201d it said. Every pound invested in alternatives to prison generates \u00a314 of additional benefits to society within 10 years through reduced unemployment, ill health and family breakdown. \u201cIf alternatives to prison were to achieve an additional reduction of just six per cent in reoffending, the state would recoup the investment required to achieve this in just one year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clearly the Government is alive to the question of cost-effectiveness. Earlier this year ministers published a consultation document which revealed that ministers want to introduce a \u201cpayment by results\u201d system for running community sentences and want it to be working by 2015.<\/p>\n
Prison reformers have mixed views on the idea. While welcoming the increased commitment to punishment in the community they have reservations about payment by results.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou only get paid if people on your courses don\u2019t re-offend at all,\u201d says\u00a0 Roma Hooper of the campaign group Make Justice Work which gave evidence to the Select Committee Inquiry on Women Offenders at the House of Commons this month. \u201cBut that\u2019s not the only measure of success. Some offenders will stop, but others will do a much lower level type of crime, say shoplifting after conspiracy to supply drugs. That would be accounted as failure, though it would be an incremental success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can take more than one go to stop people offending,\u201d she adds. \u201cIf you don\u2019t recognise that you might be setting up the new system to fail. That could discredit the entire strategy of finding alternatives to prison in the community. The two years they have allowed for pilot schemes is not enough.\u201d The jury will be out on payment by results for some time yet.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
The names of some of the offenders and their children have been changed<\/em><\/p>\n
additional reporting by Sarah Cassidy<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\nIntroduction: Children in peril as women are jailed in record numbers<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Introductory comment: The hidden victims of a \u2018lock them up\u2019 culture <\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 1: \u00a0Babies behind bars <\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 2: \u00a0The 17,000 children separated from their Mums <\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 3: The grandmothers left holding the baby and bringing up the children <\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 4: The devastating hidden toll on children \u00a0<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 5: More effective alternatives to custody <\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Part 6: The changes that are needed<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/h1>\n
Final comment: We risk creating the felons of the future<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maria Jackson, a single mother-of-three, stole a lasagne from Marks and Spencer. Her youngest son was having a friend round for tea. That morning she had discovered that her benefits had been stopped. It was a mistake and they were quickly reinstated. But, temporarily without cash, she stole a lasagne \u2013 and some olives \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[432,37,30,38],"tags":[423,11,68,714],"class_list":["post-6219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-politics","category-prisons","category-society","tag-child-protection","tag-children","tag-prison-reform","tag-prisons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6219"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6361,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6219\/revisions\/6361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}