Recommendation · source text
Ensure adequate information is provided to the courts including reports covering mental health need, vulnerability and safeguarding concerns.
Source · IAPDC
Preventing the Deaths of Women in Prison
Published: 28 March 2017
Sector: Prisons & Probation
Type: Thematic Report
Recommendations: 51
Response received
Index summary
Examination of the factors contributing to deaths of women in prison, covering the journey from community through courts to custody. Contains 51 recommendations across pre-custody, reception, in-custody care, and system-wide reform.
Original evidence
Government response
Index summaryAll recommendations accepted by ministers. Implementation mapped into the Female Offender Strategy (June 2018). Prisons Minister Alex Chalk MP provided a detailed progress update (11 May 2021) covering: rollout of Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) keyworker scheme across women's estate; Women's Estate Self Harm Task Force (established April 2020) delivering trauma-informed initiatives, additional counselling, and women-specific training; revised ACCT v6 rolled out in female estate; renewed £500k Samaritans Listener scheme grant; Women's Estate Health and Social Care Review launched. However, Public Accounts Committee (2022) found only 31 of 65 Female Offender Strategy commitments fully achieved.
Recommendations
Recommendation · source text
Encourage greater use of community sentences by the courts to include treatment orders.
Recommendation · source text
Coordinate national and local government leadership focus on prevention and the strategic reduction of women’s prison numbers.
Recommendation · source text
Roll-out liaison and diversion services across police stations and courts
Recommendation · source text
Increase investment in women’s services in the community and look to models of local authority pooled budgeting as in Greater Manchester.
Recommendation · source text
Develop a sustained network of women’s centres.
Recommendation · source text
Co-ordinate a multi-disciplinary response to vulnerable women involving family support and domestic violence services as well as health and justice provision.
Recommendation · source text
End delays in receiving prescribed medication on arrival and improve contact between GPs and prison healthcare.
Recommendation · source text
Improve arrangements for first night in custody.
Recommendation · source text
Conduct transfers in a longer-term planned manner, with more information provided to the women being moved.
Recommendation · source text
Improve drug and alcohol treatment in custody linked to treatment in the community.
Recommendation · source text
Encourage and support self-help groups and peer support, in particular sustaining a team of Samaritan Listeners and Insiders.
Recommendation · source text
Improve physical environment and remove ligature points from women’s cells/rooms.
Recommendation · source text
Ensure multi-disciplinary ACCT reviews, specifically including mental health staff.
Recommendation · source text
Provide mandatory mental health awareness training for staff and establish a system of staff support and supervision.
Recommendation · source text
Enable and support women to maintain family contact (see section on family contact).
Recommendation · source text
Focus the whole prison environment on promoting the mental and physical health and wellbeing of all prisoners in a trauma-informed way (see section on mental health).
Recommendation · source text
Develop a gender-aware and trauma-informed environment in all women’s prisons including staff training on the impact of separation and loss, and awareness of perinatal mental health and support for women at risk.
Recommendation · source text
Roll out higher level of emergency response training for all staff.
Recommendation · source text
Ensure every Mental Health Trust has a clinical lead for women’s mental health.
Recommendation · source text
Provide a greater range of mental health and substance misuse treatments, including the provision of counselling services and talking therapies, in the community.
Recommendation · source text
Provide counselling services to all women prisoners. Each women’s prison should employ a counsellor with placements for trainees routinely, and a national lead for counselling services should be instituted.
Recommendation · source text
Establish thorough-going mental health assessments for all within first 24 hours of arrival in custody.
Recommendation · source text
Review implementation of the Care Act 2014 which placed preventative duties on local authorities and required them to meet social care needs
Recommendation · source text
Ensure access to secure mental health accommodation is available in a timely manner to those who need it, prisons should not be used as places of safety.
Recommendation · source text
Ensure healthcare staff routinely share matters of risk of suicide with prison staff, in accordance with the IAP’s Information Sharing Statement.
Recommendation · source text
Develop a shared care plan for each woman to which she can contribute.
Recommendation · source text
Plan the transfers of women between prisons carefully with a standard form/template developed for handover and information regarding risk of suicide and self-harm.
Recommendation · source text
Ensure that women can retain their own information on transfer including their pin phone numbers.
Recommendation · source text
Learn and embed lessons set out by coroners, the Prison and Probation Ombudsman and the IPCC in improved transfer of information between agencies and establishments to keep women safe.
Recommendation · source text
Achieve compatibility between health information systems in England and Wales
Recommendation · source text
Put in place local information sharing protocols between all relevant health and justice, including liaison and diversion, services.
Recommendation · source text
Adopt nationally the updated Person Escort Record (PER) form with space to add information about risk as endorsed by the National Police Chief’s Council.
Recommendation · source text
Improve communication and information transfer between GP’s, midwives and prison healthcare.
Recommendation · source text
Improve communication between agencies during preparation for release.
Recommendation · source text
Impose community sentences, with family and domestic violence support where necessary, unless the offending is so serious or dangerous that only a custodial penalty will suffice.
Recommendation · source text
Create a custodial system closer to homes in smaller more residential accommodation linked to health and other local agencies.
Recommendation · source text
Implement in-cell telephones in all women’s prisons, and enable women to make free emergency telephone calls where necessary.
Recommendation · source text
Maximise family contact through better technology, to include use of videoconferencing and visiting arrangements.
Recommendation · source text
Consider and extend the use of release on temporary license (RoTL).
Recommendation · source text
Train and support staff for work with families and appoint family support/liaison officers in all establishments.
Recommendation · source text
Establish and maintain sustained partnerships with voluntary organisations offering family support.
Recommendation · source text
Provide and make accessible to women in prison the 24 hour Freephone, National Domestic Violence Hotline, run in partnership between Woman’s Aid and Refuge.
Recommendation · source text
Encourage family engagement in ACCT reviews.
Recommendation · source text
Ensure preparation for release is ongoing, forming part of a regularly reviewed sentence plan and engendering hope and a sense of future important to suicide prevention.
Recommendation · source text
Increase use of release on temporary license (ROTL) to enable women to resume contact with family and caring responsibilities and to undertake voluntary or paid work and training in the community.
Recommendation · source text
Oblige local authorities to provide safe housing for women prisoners who would otherwise become homeless at the point of release.
Recommendation · source text
Continue on release, if started in prison, mental healthcare and treatment for addictions.
Recommendation · source text
Provide social care support and mentoring on release for women with learning disabilities or learning difficulties.
Recommendation · source text
Review, and reinforce, compliance with Section 10 of the Offender Rehabilitation Act which requires commissioners and providers to take account of the particular needs of women in making supervision and rehabilitation arrangements.
Recommendation · source text
End recall to custody for most forms of technical breach of license and strengthen supervision arrangements instead.
Report details
- Published
- 28 March 2017
- Sector
- Prisons & Probation
- Type
- Thematic Report
- Response date
- 11 May 2021
Status breakdown
| Accepted | 51 |
Addressees
| Government (MoJ, DHSC, HMPPS) | 7 |
| HMPPS | 10 |
| NHS England / DHSC / HMPPS | 8 |
| HMPPS / NHS England | 10 |
| HMPPS / MoJ | 9 |
| HMPPS / MoJ / Local Authorities | 7 |