Recommendation 20

We acknowledged that the female prison estate was a small part of the overall prison estate, but asked whether the Ministry thought it was nonetheless important to ensure that some of its reinvestment benefitted women prisoners to avoid them becoming more marginalised. The Ministry committed to ensuring that “the right amount and proportion of the money available to us is invested in the women’s estate”.43 HMPPS accepted that a lot remained to be done in investing in the women’s estate and it needed to think carefully about the issue. It told us that it had not yet decided how many of its planned new prison places, or its investment in maintenance to bring accommodation back into use, would be within the female prison estate.44 The Ministry confirmed that its promised strategy for the prison estate would include the female prison estate when it was published later this year.45