The Corston Report on vulnerable women in the penal system

Following the Corston Report, which made 43 recommendations on how to improve life for women in the penal system, the government responded by:

•Increasing the use of the community orders to re-emphasise to the courts how intensive packages of requirements (coupled with supportive interventions) can be more effective at responding to women’s needs and reducing their re-offending.
•Better informing sentencers about community provision for women and about what is available in their areas and how it can address women’s needs more effectively than custody.
•Handling matters of female health and mental health more appropriately following the creation of a distinct pathway for women, and crucially it will cover not just health care for women in prison but will outline the initiatives and provision required to address health needs in the community too, from arrest, to health support for those on community sentences and through to resettlement in the community for those released from custody.
•Appointing a ministerial champion for women and criminal justice with responsibility for pushing forward matters of women in the penal system.
Despite delivery of a number of the Corston recommendations, the government has still not fully complied with the Corston Report. The following matters have not yet been fully resolved:

•Baroness Corston’s most significant recommendation in relation to women in prison was that existing women’s prisons should be replaced with suitable, geographically dispersed, small, multi-functional custodial centres, and that these should be phased in over a period of 10 years. There are still 14 women’s prisons in England and Wales.
•Strip-searching in women’s prisons has been reduced and compulsory strip searches no longer take place upon reception. However the prison service still has the power to strip search women and young girls.
•Custodial sentences for women should be reserved for serious and violent individuals who pose a threat to the public. 68% of women are in prison for non-violent offences, compared with 47% of men.
•Women unlikely to receive a custodial sentence should not be remanded in custody. The number of women entering prison on remand has seen a dramatic increase since 1997, rising by 39%, from 5,124 female remands in 1997, to 7,127 in 2008.
The All Party Parliamentary Group was set up to achieve these unfulfilled targets and to lobby politicians and government ministers with the express intention of making the Corston Report’s recommendations real.
The Follow up Report can be found here: http://www.howardleague.org/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Publications/Women_in_the_penal_system.pdf