Justice Secretary Maria Eagle today announced the creation of a joint fund to divert women away from crime. The Ministry of Justice and the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition have established a joint grant fund, each contributing £1 million, to help transform the way women are treated by the criminal justice system.
The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition is an alliance of charitable trusts and foundations working together to reduce the numbers of non-violent women in prison. The members of the Coalition are all grant-makers, with years of experience of working in the …

Today the government have announced their new strategy for diverting women away from crime, which sets out their progress two years on from accepting the recommendations of the Corston Report.
The Ministry of Justice press release says:
Today Justice Minister Maria Eagle announced a commitment to reduce women’s prison places by 400 before March 2012 so funding can be diverted for specialist services in the community. [...] The women’s community projects will offer courts a tough and credible alternative to short prison sentences. They will all tackle women’s needs in order …

Today the Justice Secretary has spoken about how wrong it is to lock up vulnerable non-violent women offenders:
“While there is a consensus that we need to be tougher on male offenders there is also a broad consensus that where possible we should punish and reform females in the community and not in prisons,” said Mr Straw. [...] “We have to be sensible and humane in getting offending down in men and women, and we have to have different, but firm, approaches”.