Fifty-First Report - Improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system

Effective implementation of the strategy has been undermined by insufficient joined-up working. Working across government is always challenging and the Ministry is reliant on many other bodies for the female offender programme to 6 Improving outcomes for women in the … Read more Effective implementation of the strategy has been undermined by insufficient joined-up working. Working across government is always challenging and the Ministry is reliant on many other bodies for the female offender programme to 6 Improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system be successful. For example, the NHS, several government departments, local authorities and the voluntary sector have key roles in providing treatment for mental health problems and addiction, support to escape domestic violence, housing advice, children’s services and help finding employment. Such bodies need to work together to provide clear routes to the support individual women need to turn their lives around. The Ministry has taken a first step to build co-operation between government departments by negotiating a concordat with them, although this took two years longer than it had promised. There are good examples of bodies working together locally but several of these started doing so before the female offender programme. The Ministry says it recognises the importance of joined-up working locally, which it calls the ‘whole-system approach’, but it has not committed nearly enough to bringing this about. In fact, it has not spent anything on helping new areas to set up these types of approaches since some it provided some seed funding for 2017–19. Recommendation: The Ministry should set out how it plans to influence more joined-up working. It should write to the Committee alongside its Treasury Minute response with an assessment of any barriers to local areas implementing ‘whole system approaches’ and how it plans to work with other government departments and organisations to address these barriers. Show less

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The Ministry is taking some steps to address the needs of ethnic minorities in the CJS, but it recognises that it has not yet done enough to achieve equality of outcomes for ethnic minority women. The Ministry’s Female Offender Strategy … Read more The Ministry is taking some steps to address the needs of ethnic minorities in the CJS, but it recognises that it has not yet done enough to achieve equality of outcomes for ethnic minority women. The Ministry’s Female Offender Strategy included actions to tackle the overrepresentation of, and unique challenges facing, black and other ethnic minority women in the CJS but progress has been slow, and the Ministry acknowledges that it needs to do better. The Ministry accepts that it can learn from others and it is committed to addressing the concerns raised in a recent publication by providers of specialist services for ethnic minority women in the CJS. The Ministry recognises that there is also an issue in making sure that it funds services specifically for ethnic minority women. The small charities that work in this field find it difficult to compete with larger organisations, which can have whole teams dedicated to developing bids for grants and contracts. The Ministry has provided some funding to help smaller organisations prepare bids. Recommendation: The Ministry should work with specialist providers and experts to establish a set of actions it needs to take to deliver equality of outcomes for ethnic minority women. This should include its arrangements for supporting smaller specialist organisations that support them. It should publish the set of actions with a timetable so that Parliament, stakeholders and others can hold it to account. It should confirm in its response to this report a planned timescale for publishing this action plan. Show less

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The Ministry does not yet know the effectiveness of its interventions, or whether it is achieving its aims. This limits its ability to identify and share best practice and to understand where it needs to invest to achieve its aims. … Read more The Ministry does not yet know the effectiveness of its interventions, or whether it is achieving its aims. This limits its ability to identify and share best practice and to understand where it needs to invest to achieve its aims. It is now almost four years since the Ministry published its Female Offender Strategy and it still does not have a plan for how it will monitor and evaluate the work it is doing to achieve its aims. The Ministry says it now recognises the importance of having the data it needs to understand progress towards its aims and measure the value of the work it is doing. But it is disappointing that it is still working on what its performance metrics will look like and does not have plans to evaluate all its interventions. It is important that it gets on with this work as it can take years to evaluate criminal justice interventions as it is often essential to track their effects on reoffending. In the shorter term, the Ministry recognises that there is a lot of good practice locally and that it now needs to work out how to share that and scale it up. The first step will be publication of the ‘one-year-on’ review of the concordat, which will include some examples of joined-up work. Recommendation: The Ministry should publish a monitoring and evaluation plan by September 2022. This should include the following: • how it will work with other government departments to evaluate the main strategy commitments and build on the evidence of what works to aid funding decisions; • the specific performance measures it will use to assess progress towards its aims. For example, how women are dealt with at various stages – before 8 Improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system court proceedings are started, while they are progressing through the courts, and when they are sentenced; and whether they offend in future; and • how it will use performance measures, along with other qualitative methods to identify good practice in local areas and what it w Show less

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Despite its emphasis on community provision in its strategy, the Ministry has not yet quantified how much funding is required or invested heavily in community services for women. The Ministry has declined to set targets for its female offender programme. It says that doing so would be inappropriate as achieving …

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It is not clear how Parliament, the public and other stakeholders can hold the Ministry to account for delivery of the strategy’s commitments. The Ministry’s decision not to set targets affects not only its ability to make good funding decisions, (see conclusion 2 above), but also makes it difficult to …

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On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Ministry of Justice (the Ministry) and HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) on improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system.1 We also took evidence from Women in Prison, the Howard League …

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The Ministry told us that it has received a record funding settlement at the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021.11 We asked the Ministry how much of this it will be spending on the female offender programme.12 It told us it has not yet allocated funding to specific budgets but …

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The first two objectives of the strategy (intervening earlier and a greater proportion of women managed in the community) each depend on improved community services for women.15 The Ministry told us the importance of work done in the community is “absolutely well understood”16 Despite this the Ministry has spent only …

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The £9.5 million for grants for community services compares with £200 million the Ministry has committed to spend on an extra 500 prison places for women due to increases in police numbers.19 We asked stakeholders how far the £200 million would stretch if it were spent on community services and …

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We asked the Ministry if it had assessed the impact of spending the £200 million on prison places for women. It has not. It told us this was because it has a duty to provide places for those sent to prison by the courts and its projections are that increased …

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The Ministry recognises it needs to work together with many other national and local bodies to improve outcomes for women in the CJS.26 It established a concordat with other government departments, creating a basis for joint working, although this was only published in January 2021—two years later than planned.27 The …

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We were told of several good practice examples where many different agencies worked together to help women with multiple problems. These include the ‘one-stop-shop model’ that women’s centres try to adopt.29 The Ministry told us about ‘problem solving courts’ where packages of support and oversight are tailored for individual women.30 …

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We asked the Ministry why it had not had the support from others it had hoped for and how it could incentivise their support. It told us that the COVID-19 pandemic had changed priorities for a lot of departments, and this had slowed down progress on joined- up working. It …

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The Ministry’s strategy included specific actions to tackle the overrepresentation of, and unique challenges facing, black and other ethnic minority women in the justice system. But progress has been slow.39 The Ministry told us that after the publication of the strategy it recognised that this is an area where it …

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The Ministry told us that it wanted to work with others to help it make greater progress.44 In particular, it referred to a recent publication, Tackling Double Disadvantage that specifically addresses issues faced by minority ethnic women in relation to the CJS.45 It said it recognises many of the recommendations …

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The Ministry decided not to set targets because achieving them would be reliant on bodies independent of the Ministry, including other government departments and the judiciary.47 We asked the Ministry about the impact of this decision on cross-government working.48 It told us that Ministers across government are reviewing what outcomes …

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We asked the Ministry how it could measure progress as it did not yet have milestones. In its reply it claimed that it had looked at 66 commitments from the strategy and given each a Red/Amber /Green rating for progress.51 We asked if it would publish the 66 commitments and …

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Stakeholders who sit on ABFO told the National Audit Office that without performance measures they had found it difficult to understand progress at a national level and for different groups of women. They reported that this had limited the ABFO’s ability to hold the Ministry to account.53 Ministers attended the …

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It is nearly four years since the strategy was published and the Ministry does not yet have an overall plan to evaluate the work it and others have done in this area.56 We asked the Ministry if it had the data it needed to know what it is achieving against …

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In evaluating the effect of its interventions, the Ministry told us it is difficult to attribute changes in the number of women in custody to specific actions, such as the use of out- of-court disposals, pre-sentence reports and community interventions. It accepted that it should be able to evaluate its …

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We asked whether the Ministry was looking at savings for the overall system and how a good outcome for an individual woman can be cost-effective for the taxpayer. The Ministry told us that it had done an analysis on the total cost of reoffending two years ago. It said it …

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There are many examples of local good practice where organisations work together to help women turn their lives around.64 We asked the Ministry how it is going to identify and disseminate best practice. The Ministry told us that its ‘one-year-on’ report on the concordat will set out some of the …

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