Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560-580)
RT HON
BARONESS CORSTON
AND MS
JENNY HALL
10 OCTOBER 2007
Q560 Mr Campbell: What I am really
trying to determine is, is there any data available of those who
went through the centres and then determining their re-offending
likelihood in comparison with those who have gone through prison
and their re-offending likelihood?
Baroness Corston: All the evidence
that I had, looking at the revolving door of prison, was that
the evidence was that prison itself did not work, never mind whether
anything else did. Certainly the women's centres I went to in
Halifax, Worcester and Glasgow were inspirational when you spoke
to women about their lives and why they had gone there, and what
the difference was, the difference it had made to them. Apart
from anything else, prisoners do not have, many of them, any of
the skills that everyone in this room takes for granted. We know
how to have a conversation. We know how to work as part of a team.
We know how to speak appropriately to people, we know how to co-operate.
None of these people do. They do not have any of those skills,
they have utterly chaotic lives.
Q561 Mr Campbell: I understand that
but I am trying to get at the hard, raw data. I suppose it would
be possible for us to get the number of females who have served
a prison sentence in the past five years throughout the UK.
Baroness Corston: Yes.
Q562 Mr Campbell: And from that draw
a conclusion about how many were readmitted to prison as a result
of re-offending after their release. Are there similar figures
for the females who have gone through the community centres that
you have visited in terms of their re-offending?
Baroness Corston: No, because
none of them is on the kind of statutory basis where those figures
could be capped with any certainty.
Q563 Chairman: You are saying they
have not been convicted of an indictable offence?
Baroness Corston: They are not
necessarily accepted as disposals by the courts in general. You
will get some magistrates who will use them and some who will
not. The one place where I think you will find there will be evidence
is in Scotland because the 218 centre in Scotland is financed
by the Scottish Parliament and they are in the process of doing
an evaluation exercise to look at the correlation between women
serving community sentences under the supervision of the 218 centre
and then subsequent re-offending rates.
Q564 Chairman: We will pursue this
because I think Mr Campbell's question is very legitimate. If
you are seeking to advance the case for non-custodial punishments
of one form or another, I am personally with you on that, we do
need to be able somehow to answer the question he has asked. I
will ask our clerk to contact people in Scotland. Do you have
information there?
Baroness Corston: May I read this
section from my report?
Q565 Chairman: Yes, please do.
Baroness Corston: "An independent
evaluation of 218 in February 2006 for the Scottish Executive
Justice Department, which recognised that the Centre had not been
operating for sufficient time to provide meaningful reconviction
data, reported that, `Interviews with sentencers and prosecutors
have shown that they make use of 218 and value it as a resource.
In individual cases, referrals to 218, such as through diversion
from prosecution or direct bail, often successfully prevented
female offenders from entering custody, at least in the short-term.
Quantitative and qualitative data indicate that women who have
engaged in services at 218 have been actively involved in offending
and that they fit the profile of female offenders in custody.
So it is likely that women who engage with services at 218 are
avoiding custody in the short and longer term.'"[2]
Q566 Chairman: May I ask you one question
before I bring my colleague in. We have already done a report,
this Committee, into community restorative justice. Now of course
there are very special applications in Northern Ireland, and you
will understand this.
Baroness Corston: Yes.
Q567 Chairman: Running through my mind
as you were talking was the thought would an application of community
restorative justice, in your view, be an adequate and sensible
way of dealing with many of the women who otherwise would come
before the courts and have custodial sentences possibly? Have
you looked at that aspect of it?
Baroness Corston: Yes. I think
in a way that is the sub-text of a great deal of what I say. It
was certainly something which was reinforced for me by prison
governors who said that they thought that was more appropriate.
Some prison governors tried to provide a regime which almost replicates
that kind of thing because they want to have women ready to lead
what we would call purposeful lives when in prison and is particularly
true in Cornton Vale, the only women's prison in Scotland, where
I was extraordinarily impressed by the approach taken by the then
governor, Sue Brooks, who I think has now gone to work at the
Scottish Prison Service headquarters. The regime that she introduced
after a scandal in Cornton Vale with high numbers of women taking
their lives was inspirational.
Q568 Mr Murphy: Baroness, your vision
in your report is basically of two types of unit, one to deal
with lesser offences, I think you suggest from perhaps six to
12 days, and another one of up to 30 beds to deal with obviously
more serious offences and people who have longer sentences to
serve. How would the 30 bed units in reality differ from a small
prison, if people indeed have to serve more than two years and
some of them are serving life sentences?
Baroness Corston: They would be
like small prisons, there is no question that they would be like
small prisons, but I would hope it would be run in a way which
is appropriate to the needs of the women who are in those prisons.
I would expect all other women who come before the courts or are
at risk of coming before the courts to be dealt with in community
centres. I understand that there is such a centre either built
or being set up in Northern Ireland.
Q569 Mr Murphy: Could you ever see
a situation in the current prison system, the regime changing
to not needing 30 bed units, in other words a change in the current
regime within women's prisons? Would that not suffice for people
who are serving longer sentences?
Baroness Corston: Yes, it probably
would, because of course those women who are serving sentences
also have families, they have children who have a right to see
their mothers without travelling 200 miles. I do not see a difficulty
with that and, indeed, the fact that the Government is now talking
about investing £1.5 billion in this programme, it seems
to me, is the perfect opportunity to use some of that money to
start setting up small geographically based units for women and
thereby over time, I am not suggesting this would happen quickly,
freeing up some of those bigger prisons for the male prison population
so we do not have this situation of people being held in court
cells and police stations.
Q570 Mr Anderson: Can I go back to
the point about resettlement. You spoke about the different views
of men and women coming out of prison. If a man comes out, hopefully
he is into work; the women quite rightly into the home and family.
How is that being addressed now and what do you think needs to
be done to address it properly?
Baroness Corston: I do not think
it is being done now. There are increasing efforts by prison staff
who are responsible for the care of women. I stress that is how
they put it, they talk always of the care of women in prison.
There are increasing efforts to secure accommodation. I have been
to prisons where there are staff who have dedicated tasks of helping
women at risk with resettlement. They come up against sometimes
the intentionally homeless rule where you will get very unsympathetic
housing staff who will say, "We are not accepting responsibility
for two reasons. One, you went to prison so you therefore declared
yourself intentionally homeless by going to prison. Two, you say
you have got children but they are not with you so we are not
going to accept responsibility". They go to social services
and say, "I want my children back" and they say, "You
cannot have your children back, you have got nowhere to live".
That is what leads to this vortex where they end up leading these
chaotic lives and living on drugs and when I say drugs it is not
just drugs, it can just as easily be alcohol. That was the sub-text
to what I was saying. I think I have recommended that the intentionally
homeless rule should be abolished for these women because I feel
that is an essential pre-condition.
Q571 Sammy Wilson: I just want to
go back to the alternatives to prison. It really, I suppose, ties
in with the point Stephen Pound made right at the start about
the evidence for some of the recommendations. In your report you
say: "I and many others believe that community centres will
help women to stop re-offending in a way which prison has manifestly
failed to do so". You then quoted the report which has been
done on the Glasgow one. I noticed the terms which were used were
"often" or "it is likely", there is no evidence
there either.
Baroness Corston: Sorry, can you
be specific about what you mean?
Q572 Sammy Wilson: What I am saying
is it really follows on from the point Gregory Campbell was making.
You are saying you believe that this will happen, that re-offending
will be less likely, but all I am asking is what evidence is there.
The only evidence you have produced is the report on the centre
in Glasgow and the terms used there are "often" or "it
is likely that" people will be less likely to re-offend but
you really have not got any evidence that this is the case. This
is a fairly fundamental recommendation.
Baroness Corston: About the community
centres?
Q573 Sammy Wilson: Yes.
Baroness Corston: Well, I have
just quoted the Scottish Executive—
Q574 Sammy Wilson: They have not
produced any figures either.
Baroness Corston: --- from February
2006. It may well be in the body of their report what they do,
I am quoting from it. What I was charged with doing was looking
at this issue in the round, talking to people and coming up with
statistics where they were available. I think if you read the
whole of the report you will find it is full of statistics. Indeed,
there is a huge bibliography at the end which gives the sources
of the assertions that I make. Where I have seen something which
works or where I have spoken to prison governors who have consistently
said the same thing to me, I make no apology for saying, "Most
people have said to me". I am not going to name individual
prison governors, it would be invidious, but it is only right
for me to represent in the public domain messages which come repeatedly
to me from professionals whose expertise is greater than mine
will ever be. I cannot make an apology for that.
Q575 Sammy Wilson: I am sure you
will appreciate that given the implications of this, a report
based on anecdotal evidence like that is hardly the basis for
making firm recommendations.
Baroness Corston: If you are talking
about the reality of people's lives, there is always a place for
anecdote because anecdotes are illustrative. It does not mean
to say that they apply to everybody, they can illustrate situations,
they can illustrate the failure of particular procedures. I maintain,
Mr Wilson, that my report gives as much statistical evidence,
in the body of the report, not in the summary, as can be achieved.
Q576 Sammy Wilson: You have mentioned
all of the services which women prisoners need and the very deep
problems they face. How do you believe that those services can
be provided in units as small as you are suggesting, 12 bed, 30
bed units? Have you done any costings—since there are not
likely to be economies of scale there—on providing services
on such a basis as those kinds of units?
Baroness Corston: Yes. Looked
at from the lowest base, if we are talking about the woman that
I spoke about earlier on who I met in Worcester, she was at that
time at the Asha Centre. A place at the Asha Centre costs £750
a year, the capital cost of a place in the prison service is £77,000
a year, and I was just saying which I thought was the best value
for money. Other centres like the Calderdale Centre are supported
institutionally and by NGOs although they are independent and
have similar costs to the Asha Centre. At the base, and the women's
centres I am talking about, then the benefit is obvious. As to
the cost of a smaller unit, I cannot for the life of me imagine,
although I do not think any work has been done on this in the
Home Office or in the Ministry of Justice, that the capital costs
are going to be more than the £77,000 a year that currently
represents one person.
Q577 Sammy Wilson: No, I am talking
about the servicing costs but obviously if you are providing services
for a larger number of people then the cost per person is going
to be much lower.
Baroness Corston: The £77,000
represents all costs of a place in prison for a year and £750
represents all costs for a place at the Asha Centre. It is like
with like.
Chairman: That is the point.
Q578 Stephen Pound: Can I endorse
what you said about Smart Justice. I am working with them in actually
placing members in schools in my constituency.
Baroness Corston: They are very
good.
Q579 Stephen Pound: The point I want
to make is the Secretary of State made an extensive statement
this afternoon at 12.30 about cognitive behaviour therapy in particular,
and the increase in resources for that form of therapy, both in
preventative and post crisis stages. I assume from what you said
that you feel that therapy has a crucial role. Do you feel it
has a role outside prison, inside prison or both?
Baroness Corston: Well, Mr Pound,
I am sorry to say that the people to whom I spoke in prison and
who knew about this said they thought cognitive behaviour therapy
was extraordinarily effective with male prisoners but they did
not think it worked with women. Women have different problems
and different challenges, different kinds of thinking skills.
Stephen Pound: That is interesting.
Q580 Chairman: What you have told
us has been extremely helpful. I do not want to be guilty of putting
words in your mouth but the substance of your argument is that
having looked at this following these tragic incidents of suicide,
and having worked with those who have themselves worked over a
long period with women prisoners, you believe that, by and large,
women who are in prison are disturbed individuals, many of whom
have committed offences which could be more adequately dealt with
by other than a custodial sentence, and where a custodial sentence
is imposed you believe it is absolutely essential to look after
those people with the sensitivity which recognises that women
are different from men. That would be a fair summary, would it?
Baroness Corston: Yes it would.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We obviously
will be reflecting on the evidence you have given us. It may well
be we will like to check one or two things with you and our clerk
will be in touch. We are most grateful. Thank you very much indeed.
2 The Home Office, 2007. A Report by Baroness Jean
Corston of a Review of Women with Particular Vulnerabilities in
the Criminal Justice System, para 6.9. Back
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