Peterborough (Women)

Response
Locally, the Director is working with probation officers and Commissioned Rehabilitative Service (CRS) providers to ensure women who receive short sentences have their resettlement needs met. HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) comments in response to other issues raised in your report about resettlement services are set out in the attached annex. The Director of HMP/YOI Peterborough acknowledges that the transition period following the unification of Probation affected the continuity of delivery of resettlement services. The prison team continues to work closely with Probation colleagues and CRS providers to ensure the needs of the men and women are being met. The Director is proud of the successful Outside Link facility initiative in supporting prisoners post release and in the wider community. More broadly and to clarify, as part of the unification changes made, contracts have been let in each Probation Region to providers of Accommodation services for sentenced prisoners (including the East of England Region where HMP/YOI Peterborough is located). These CRS providers are mandated to have a presence in the resettlement prisons in their region. HMPPS is currently in the process of extending these contracts to provide services to all people in prison who have accommodation needs and hope to have the extended service in place by the end of 2022. In addition, East of England and other regions are commissioning for a single multi-regional custody Finance, Benefit and Debt (FBD) service (for remanded and sentenced men) which will commence in 2023. Under the new resettlement approach all resettlement prisons including locals, will have an embedded resettlement provision (managed by or otherwise linked to a Probation Delivery Unit). The embedded Pre-Release teams are to provide immediate resettlement needs and pre-release support for all people in prison including the unsentenced and people out of area, including pre-release services not currently available via CRS including FBD services. The minimum will be to assess under the Basic Custody Screening Tool 2, undertake specialist immediate needs and support services to the people in prison. The Pre-Release teams will liaise with the Community Offender Manager or Short Sentence Function as allocated and support pre-release planning activity throughout the sentence, including progressing referrals that have been made to CRS suppliers and providing a point of contact for CRS suppliers seeking to engage with the individual. Regional Probation Directors are working to stabilise the Pre-Release teams and CRS provision in their regions to improve service delivery to all people in prison.

Response
Regarding the number of women serving very short sentences, I would like to reassure the Board the Government recently announced it will make up to £24 million funding available over the next three years to providers of community-based services. This is to help vulnerable women who might or have been involved in the criminal justice system to improve community support for women who may be at risk of committing further crimes. We are developing a Residential Women’s Centre in Wales, which will provide an alternative approach for around 50 women a year who would otherwise have been handed short custodial sentences. This is alongside plans to pilot a new Problem-Solving Court targeted at women with complex needs, including drug and alcohol abuse. The Justice Select Committee’s recent report on women in prison looked at additional facilities having the potential to improve custodial conditions for those who are imprisoned, as well as going some way towards achieving the Female Offender Strategy aim of making the female estate more trauma informed. The Delivery Plan announced in the Prison Strategy White Paper, will set out clear plans for progressing this work over the next three years. We aim is to publish the Delivery Plan in due course.