Agenda Alliance responds to the Lord Chancellor's statement on prison capacity

We cautiously welcomed the update on how the government will address the rapidly worsening crisis of prison capacity; however, we are concerned about the detail of some of these announcements. Read our full response below:

The statement from the Lord Chancellor, Rt Hon Alex Chalk KC MP, to the House of Commons on 16 October, covered a range of measures due to be introduced to reduce prison capacity pressures. Some measures are to be cautiously welcomed – but their success for women with multiple unmet needs will depend on how they are implemented alongside support. The majority of women in prison are there on short sentences which separate them from their children and cause needless long-term harm.

Women in prison often experience interrelated unmet needs and have complex life histories. Data shows that:

• Over half of women in prison have experienced domestic abuse (this figure is likely an underestimate);
• Self-harm in women’s prisons increased by 37% in the 12 months up to December 2022. The number of self-harm incidents among young women in prison age 18-24 surpassed all other age groups of women in custody;
• Over half of women in prison survived physical, emotional or sexual abuse during childhood;
• 80% of young women in custody aged 25 and under surveyed by HMIP (2021 to 2022) reported having mental health problems; (HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) conducts a “prisoner survey” every year, during which they gather responses to a survey questionnaire. See Criminal Justice Inspectorates (2022) Prisoner survey responses)
• Nearly half of women in prison were suspended or temporarily excluded from school;
• Approximately one third of women in prison experienced time in care as a child.

Black, Asian, Minoritised and Migratised women are also overrepresented at nearly every stage of the criminal justice system, including in custody. This disproportionality means that many women in prison face additional discrimination on account of their ethnicity. Research from the Double Disadvantage partnership shows that:

• Black women are twice as likely as white women to be arrested;
• Black, Asian and ‘minority ethnic’ women are more likely to receive a custodial sentence in the Crown Court than white women;
• Foreign national women accounted for 10% of the female prison population in 2020/21. Some are known to have been coerced or trafficked into offending.

We want to see the number of women sent to prison dramatically reduced.

However, the government is already projecting that by November 2023, the number of young women in custody aged 18 to 20 is projected to increase by 50%. This trend must be halted. To do this, trauma, gender, age and culturally-responsive support must be offered earlier, in communities, to address challenges in women’s lives which often drive behaviour they are criminalised for. While some of the measures announced have the potential to be positive, others lack the necessary detail, and we have concerns of potential unintended consequences.

Probation and community support

The Lord Chancellor also proposed that some prisons will be allowed to release some people who have committed ‘lower-level offences’ early. These people would be placed under strict licence conditions on what they can do, and where they can go, where breaching these conditions could mean immediately being sent back to prison.

Without the right support in the community, however, we are concerned that women will be set up to fail. The Chancellor referred to the role of probation in supervising those in the community with announcing any new funding. Following years of underinvestment, probation services are worryingly stretched, caseloads are unsustainably high, and staff retention is low. Probation can play a key role when working in partnership with the specialist women and girls’ sector to deliver gender-responsive support for women in the community. But without consistent, long-term support from skilled practitioners who work with a range of agencies to provide holistic wraparound services, women will struggle to meet the range of needs they have to prevent them from being caught up again in the justice system.

Data and reducing the size of the female estate

Finally, the Lord Chancellor promised an annual statement will be laid before the House of Commons and the House of Lords outlining “current prison capacity, future demand, the range of system costs that would be incurred under different scenarios and our forward pipeline of prison build.”

Transparent sharing of data and decision-making is important, but there is no justification for the expansion of the women’s prison estate. Moreover, reporting on progress against a goal of creating more places directly contradicts the aim to reduce the female prison population, as set out in the government’s Female Offenders Strategy. These annual updates should therefore provide alternative solutions to expanding the female prison estate and set out how the government is tackling projections that the female custody population will increase, rather than the number of new prison places they are creating.

If you have any specific questions on our work around women and girls in contact with the criminal justice system, please contact our Policy, Research and Campaigns Manager Maisie on maisie@agendaalliance.org.