The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition is an alliance of 21 charitable trusts, foundations and individual philanthropists seeking to transform how women are treated by the criminal justice system.

Our twenty members are all grant-makers, with years of experience of working in the criminal justice system. Every year they invest millions of pounds in supporting charities working with offenders. This experience gives them considerable knowledge of what works to reduce women’s offending.

Our Coalition is named for the Corston Report of 2007, which made the case for a completely new approach to women’s offending. The Corston recommendations drew heavily from the innovative work of charities in the criminal justice system, much of which was funded by charitable trusts and foundations.

In June 2008, a group of trusts and foundations wrote a letter to Jack Straw, the then Justice Secretary, pledging funders’ support for implementing the Corston recommendations. Subsequently a number of those funders decided to work more closely together to reduce women’s offending.

The Corston Coalition aims to secure and sustain a policy shift from imprisonment to community sentencing for vulnerable women offenders, through advocacy, funding and critical partnership with other charities and government.

Our priorities are:

• achieving political commitment to diversionary, preventative and rehabilitative responses to women’s offending
• supporting (not just through funding) a sustainable network of integrated women offender services in England and Wales
• ensuring that women are consistently diverted from custody into community provision

The advocate and spokesperson for the Coalition is Antonia Bance. Please contact Antonia in the first instance about anything to do with the Coalition, including all press queries.