CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Crispin Blunt: Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC) reception - House of Lords on 24 January.

  1. Thank you for inviting me to speak again. You will recall that when I spoke to you in May last year, I was able to announce the continued partnership between MoJ and the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition, and the match funding of around three million pounds by NOMS and independent funders for 2011/12 to sustain a substantial number of women’s community services. I value the immense contribution which the Independent Funders have made to the development of this sector and would like to thank you for the funding package with NOMS to keep the doors of these centres open.
  2. I am also grateful to Baroness Corston for her specific invitation to speak so I can outline to this audience the Government’s Strategy for Women Offenders. Last time, I talked about work that was underway and the proposals for a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ set out in the Government’s Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle. There continues to be a positive story to tell – especially for women offenders:
  3. Women are less likely than men to commit crime and less likely to re-offend. They are less likely than men to be sent to prison and are more likely than men to receive a fine and an out-court disposal for their crimes.
  4. Our continued work to reduce offending by women and unnecessary use of prison where better alternatives are available has seen a significant reduction in short sentencedreceptions(down 11 per cent for the first quarter in 2011-12 from the previous year) and a year on year reduction in the women’s prison population. This reduction in demand meant that it was feasible to close HMP Morton Hall as a women’s prison last year, meeting our plan to reduce the number of places in the women’s estate by 400.
  5. I am fully committed to addressing women’s offending – both for their own good and that of the public. To sustain this improvement we must take these positive findings into account and learn the lessons from what seems to work for women in the criminal justice system. Of the small proportion of women sent to prison many have multiple problems, including higher levels of self-harm than men and long histories of abuse.

  1. Like everyone here I want to see an end to therevolving door of women’s imprisonment and re-offending and this can only be achieved if we successfully rehabilitate women, whether that is in the community or in custody.
  2. So I want to share with you my analysis of how women will positively benefit from our priorities for the future of the criminal justice system. This will include our direct plans in a number of key areas, such as mental health, drug recovery, violence against women, troubled families,employment, and women’s community services. Crucially it also reflects our systems wide changes that focus on reoffending and criminal justice reinvestment within a social justice agenda.

Mental Health

  1. I want to ensure that offenders receive treatment for their mental health, substance misuse and other health problems in the most appropriate setting, building on the work of Lord Bradley - that is why we are working closely with the Department of Health for offenders to benefit from our plans to roll out diversion and liaison services in all police custody and at courts by 2014. This is already begun and last month Paul Burstow announced a further £20m towards this objective for 2012/13.
  2. We are also looking at how intensive, treatment-based alternatives to custody for offenders with drug or mental health problems might work for women. Four women-only services (in Wirral, Bristol, Birmingham and Tyneside) are among the 16 selected development sites.
  3. Getting the justice system to a place where it begins to get offenders this mental health treatment early will significantly benefit women offenders - as the shocking relative level of self harm amply evidence.

Drug recovery

  1. I want women offenders to have a proper chance to get off drugs for good. Our plans include the design and implementation of Payment-by-Results pilots for Drug and Alcohol Recovery. I believe this provides an ideal opportunity to improve the drug and alcohol recovery outcomes for women in the criminal justice system.

  1. Too often we see substance misusing offenders falling into the gap between leaving prison and accessing treatment in the community - and we see people who could have avoided offending and custody had their substance misuse been tackled earlier. The Government is clear that we need to build a system that is joined up, effective, and turns lives around - one that gets offenders and substance mis-users into full recovery and away from drugs and offending for good.
  2. Eight local areas are testing whether paying providers on the basis of results can incentivise the recovery outcomes we want to see for people addicted to substances - including putting a stop to their offending. These pilots will launch in April this year and the offending outcome will further strengthen the incentives toreduce women's drug and alcohol misuse.
  3. Last week I visited Enfieldto see for myself how they are progressing. From what I saw, many of the pilot areas already have links with prisons and probation - to ensure that offenders are engaged in the drug and alcohol recovery pilots upon immediate release back into the community. This includes Bronzefieldand Holloway which are potential partners for Oxfordshire and Kent, and Enfield respectively. Elsewhere in the country, two local areas (Stockport and Wakefield) intend to develop links with HMP New Hall.
  4. NOMS is also piloting drug recovery wings which place a strong emphasis on connecting short-sentenced prisoners with community based services to ensure better continuity of treatment and care.
  5. The first tranche of Drug Recovery Wings were launched last June in 5 male local prisons, but we are committed to implementing a second tranche of 5 which will include 2 women's prisons and a Young Offenders Institute from April this year. I am very pleased to announce today that New Hall and Askham Grange women’s prisons will be piloting Drug Recovery Wings, and I will be identifying a third women’s prison in the near future. This will allow us to explore the complexities of testing recovery wings in other prisons – and ensure we get it right for all offenders and women in particular.
  6. This is exactly the kind of joined up working we need to ensure continuity of care from prison into the community - an important aspect for recovery for women offenders.

Violence Against Women

  1. The Ministry of Justice is also pivotal to the Government’s strategy to end violence against women and girls. We are lining up alongsidethe Home Secretary to deliver this vital agenda. Theresa May has shown strong leadership within this Government to ensure we tackle the root causes of violence and deal fully with its consequences.
  2. Many women offenders are the victims of abuse and it is imperative that we do all we can to protect them. Some of our work so far includes:

-NOMS working with Women's Aid to develop a framework to improve support for women offenders who have experienced domestic and sexual violence;

-NOMS funding Women’s Aid to train staff to pilot the 'Power to Change' programme and help women prisoners who want to leave a violent relationship;

-NOMS has developed awareness training for staff working in the community and in prisons – and more than 1,000 members of staff and CJS partners were trained in the last financial year alone; and

-further specific NOMS training for staffto raise awareness of women who may have been trafficked, andhow staff should respond to this, including the national reporting centre arrangements for trafficked women, and the important role which voluntary sector, organisations such as the Salvation Army and the Poppy Project (in London) have in working with this vulnerable group.

Troubled Families

  1. We have a responsibility to the public to protect them from crime and to ensure that those who commit serious offences are punished properly. Equally we recognise that a decision to imprison a mother can cause serious upheaval and distress to her children. The children of prisoners often grow up in chaotic circumstances and have poor outcomes in life – and many go on to be offenders themselves later in life. We can’t consider and tackle their problems in isolation from the other problems that their families face. It makes no sense for dozens of different state workers to intervene with these families in dozens of different ways, without a coherent plan for change.
  2. You will all be aware of the renewed focus that this Government is placing on tackling the problems caused by our country’s most troubled families. As the Prime Minister said when he announced details on this work last month: “We have also got to change completely the way Government interacts with [these families]; the way the state intervenes in their lives.” We are determined to tackle the problems of troubled families and a new team, led by Louise Casey, will be taking forward a national programme to turn them around. We will work with local authorities to promote a co-ordinated approach to families’ problems which enables families to turn their lives around. We will recognise where outcomes – crime and antisocial behaviour, education, worklessness – are linked and we will join up work.

Employment

  1. I want women offenders to have the same opportunities to find work as men. Women offenders are less likely than male prisoners to be in employment both before and after custody. That is why, as part of our work with the DWP, we are ensuring women leaving prison and who claim Jobseekers’Allowance will also have access to the Work Programme on release.
  2. There is real scope for innovation here, I recently met Women’s Wisdom to hear about their work to develop community payback for women through the ‘Arc’ project. Developed with funding from the NOMS Social Enterprise Programme, they give women offenders the opportunity to work with a number of local businesses in the Southampton area – with a strong focus on work as the primary goal for women right from the outset. It has strikingly good results – 39 women placed with the service, worked over 4400 hours, 6 have gone into formal education, 3 into employment and 2 into volunteering and other activity.

Women’s Community Services

  1. Finally, I want to ensure that services in the community are helping us deliver effective sentences for women. We are spending an estimated £80m a year on adult females serving community and suspended sentences and we can see that women are doing slightly better than men on these sentences. We are determined to ensure community sentences are effective and we must inspire confidence from the public and the courts.

  1. Baroness Corston has championed the need for holistic and gender specific services for vulnerable women in the community. I have seen first hand a number of these services including, a recent tour in Gloucestershire where I visited the ISIS Women’s Centre. What I was impressed by was the dedicated staff who offer support to women with complex needs. I could see a genuine partnership developing with NHS services and a focus on addressing deeper problems resulting from experiences of trauma and abuse.

Funding

  1. This is why we will continue to fund services with a proven track record of tackling offending behaviour. Last time I spoke, I confirmed that NOMS had made a clear commitment to future funding and I know there has been close consultation with the Corston Independent Funders in reaching a decision on the best way forward.

  1. So today, I am very pleased to formally announce to you: that in 2012-13 NOMS will continue to fund the vast majority of these community services – some 30 services in total. This new commitment will amount to an additional £3.5m to existing Probation Trust budgets and will form part of their future baseline funding.

Localism

  1. Given this Government’s strong commitment to localism, you will not be surprised if I say that the future for women’s services lies at the local level, with responsibility for many decisions transferred from Whitehall to Probation Trusts. Going forward, I will be looking to see more locally devolved commissioning to ensure provision is integrated into local services. In future, commissioning intentions will explicitly ask Probation Trusts to demonstrate how they will ensure the appropriate provision of women’s services going forward.

  1. By 2013-14, I would also like to see the distribution of services for women to far better reflect local demand in a number of key areas across the country. I want to seeall women's support servicessupporting women to actively engage with criminal justice partners to address offending, based on available evidence about what reduces re-offending. When considering criminal justice as part of a social justice agenda, women are a very good example that you can not deal with offending as separate from other factors such as domestic violence or substance abuse.
  2. This will be about delivering targeted services on the ground and ensuring responsibility for providing gender specific and holistic services have been built into the fabric of every Probation Trustas a part of comprehensive local service delivery. I believe that now and in the future there is a much greater role for the voluntary and community sector than previously and we must embrace this joint-working.
  3. I recognise, however, that the funding approach will be a big change for both providers and Probation Trusts. It may mean existing specialist offender focusedproviders need to work with several Probation Trusts who, in turn, will be required to ensure that the needs of women offenders are firmly embedded in their work. But it should also mean that not just the 30 women’s centres are engaged with women offenders but a much greater proportion of specialist women support centres take a role with women offenders too.I am therefore keen that everyone involved should start planning now to ensure a successful transition to this new way of working.

Probation Review

  1. I hope that I have been able to show you how our ‘fresh thinking’ will work for women offenders. Over the past few months we have also been considering the future shape and structure of probation services and will soon be publishing a consultation document to seek views on our proposals. We are committed to opening up probation services to the widest range of potential providers, which is a vital opportunity to increase the involvement, and draw on the skills, of voluntary, community and private sector organisations.
  2. We are acutely aware that women offenders represent a lower risk, but high need, group. Therefore women offenders stand to gain positively from a policy agenda that prioritises tackling reoffending and the underlying factors associated with it, doing so without compromising legitimate public expectations of punishment. So a policy that enables a much greater role for the voluntary sector with this group increasing the diversity of providers is of particular importance to the successful rehabilitation of female offenders.

Conclusion

  1. This is a big agenda, but I believe that we are demonstrating the commitment and leadership that Baroness Corston has sought for women offenders, and that we are bringing some fresh thinking to the solutions.
  2. There has been a lot of emphasis following the Corston Report on what resources are allocated at the centre for this agenda. I understand the arguments, but it follows from what I have said about localism that we do not want to establish a women’s commission or board but would prefer to see the taxpayers investment pushed out to the frontline where it can make a more immediate impact on our priorities for women.
  3. Our system reforms on rehabilitation such as payment by results in lowering reoffending, changes in mental health diversion and criminal justice as part of a social justice agenda are making a reality of better addressing the causes of crime, to address the needs of women offenders, and protect the public.
  4. Underwriting this is cross-government Ministerial governance in place in the areas I have highlighted to allow me to promote women in the criminal justice system with colleagues. Most of all the women’s agenda enjoys the forum and leadership of the Home Secretary and the Minister for Women.
  5. I am totally confident that the system changes we are making will improve offender management in our country. These changes will positively make a difference to the behaviour of offenders who are lower risk of harm but need more complex and specific interventions, particularly those the voluntary and charitable sector are more suited to deliver. Like all profound changes they will take a little time but if they do not work disproportionally well for women I know that not only will I be hearing about it from Theresa May and Lynne Featherstone but all of those present today as well. I welcome that accountability and to be able to free up others to deliver the objective we all share.
  6. We are keen to get on with delivering change for the better, working in partnership with independent funders and the voluntary sector, as well as my Ministerial colleagues across Government. Together, I believe that we can deliver the priorities for women that I have outlined today.

Thank you.