The Ministry of Justice recently published a set of proposals on rehabilitation and sentencing, called Breaking the Cycle. The dedicated consultation webpage for the proposals is here.

The Corston Coalition have responded to this Green Paper. Our full response is here.

In summary, we believe that the proposals in the Green Paper need to be brought together in a clear action plan for women offenders. This action plan should include:

A recommitment to the principle that community penalties should be the norm for women offenders
Guaranteed visible senior leadership for the programme, supported by dedicated women’s operational team and local champions for women offenders. This senior leadership role or mechanism should be accountable for the transformation of justice for women and should lead cross-governmental efforts to reduce women’s offending and ensure the needs of women with multiple needs and chaotic lives are met
A timetable to reduce the capacity of the women’s prison estate, and to re-direct this funding into provision for women offenders in the community
A commitment to ensuring that all payment by results commissioned contracts for the delivery of community sentences, resettlement of short-sentenced prisoners and drug rehabilitation will specify women-specific outcomes and will require a women-specific work stream. This should build on the knowledge gained from the women’s community projects programme funded by the Ministry of Justice since 2009.
National work plans to improve support for women in the criminal justice system who have experienced domestic or sexual violence or who have been involved in prostitution
A commitment to ensuring that all mental health liaison and diversion services have specialist services for women, building on the best practice in the sector

We also believe that, in pursuit of the public service reform objectives which are part of the Big Society, the Government should develop payment by results commissioning that explicitly facilitates the engagement of the voluntary and community sector, including small and specialist charities. We recommend the creation of specific support programmes to enable charities to compete for commissioned contracts, and for further attention to be paid to financing models for charitable providers.