| answer text |
<p>The Female Offender Strategy (2018) set out our vision to see fewer women entering
the justice system and reoffending; fewer women in custody, particularly on short
custodial sentences, with more managed successfully in the community; and a custodial
environment that enables rehabilitation. The strategy launched an ambitious programme
of work to improve outcomes for female offenders and make society safer by tackling
the underlying causes of offending and reoffending. This will take several years to
deliver, with our planned pilot of a residential women’s centre in at least five sites
in England and Wales likely to last until the latter part of this decade.</p><p>Some
two years on from publication of the Strategy we are making good progress. We have
already invested £5.1 million Strategy funding in 30 different women’s services across
England and Wales, helping to sustain and enhance existing services, fill gaps in
provision, and provide properties for new women’s centres. Other achievements include
publication of a new Women’s Policy Framework; roll-out of new training for staff
working with women in custody and the community; improvements to the preparation of
pre-sentence reports; publication and ongoing implementation of the recommendations
in Lord Farmer’s review into family ties for female offenders; undertaken a review
of police forces’ responses to our guidance on working with vulnerable women; piloting
a new offender management model for women under supervision in the community; commissioning
research to inform our policy on BAME female offenders; and publication of our review
of the operational policy on Pregnancy, Mother and Baby Units, and Mothers separated
from children under the age of 2 in prison.</p><p>On 5 May 2020, we announced the
investment of a further £2.5m in women’s community services in England and Wales in
2020/21, supporting them to tackle the root causes of offending and help women to
turn their lives around. We also announced that the first site of our residential
women’s centre pilot will be located in Wales. This will provide accommodation for
vulnerable women with complex needs who would otherwise be sentenced to custody, enabling
them to stay closer to home and maintain important family ties, and will directly
tackle the issues which often underlie offending, like substance misuse and mental
health. We will now work with Welsh Government and partners in Wales to identify a
provider and site.</p>
|
|
