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<p>The Female Offender Strategy sets out our vision to see fewer women in custody
by developing more options for supporting women in the community. Across government,
we are investing £5 million of funding over two years in community provision for women.
The first tranche of this funding was announced last month, and saw £3.3 million invested
in women’s provision, including enhancing existing services, creating new services
for women with specific needs, such as domestic abuse, and supporting the development
of new women’s centres.</p><p>As part of the Female Offender strategy, we also committed
to working with local and national partners to develop a ‘residential women’s centre’
pilot in at least five sites across England and Wales. The aim of the pilot will be
to develop a robust evidence base about what could be effective, sustainable and scalable
models for improving outcomes for female offenders and reducing the numbers and frequency
of women entering and re-entering custody on short custodial sentences.</p><p>We are
making sure the National Probation Service’s pre-sentence reports – which assist the
court in making sentencing decisions - offer the courts robust community sentencing
options which balance punitive and rehabilitative requirements and set out how women
will be supported to comply. This may mean that, in some cases, the courts will sentence
a woman to a community order rather than a short custodial sentence.</p>
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