Policy paper

Female offender strategy delivery plan: 'one year on' progress report

Published 9 May 2024

Applies to England and Wales

The Female Offender Strategy (2018) set out our approach to improving outcomes for women in the criminal justice system, recognising that these women are some of the most vulnerable in society and that the drivers for their offending, and subsequent effective rehabilitation, are often different to those of men. The strategy highlighted that many of these women are victims, as well as perpetrators of crime.

The Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan (FOSDP), published in 2023, set out specific and measurable commitments for 2022 to 2025, with a focus on 4 aims:

1.Fewer women entering the criminal justice system and reoffending. 2.Fewer women serving short custodial sentences with a greater proportion managed successfully in the community. 3.Better outcomes for women in custody. 4.Protecting the public through better outcomes for women on release.

As committed to in the FOSDP, the following report sets out where, in the 12 months post publication, commitments have been completed, embedded as business as usual, or are in progress. It also explains where work has been delayed.

This is supported by our Metrics Dashboard which, published in March 2024, presents 5-year data trends for each metric in the FOSDP. The dashboard sets out published data in a new format which can be broken down differently, promoting a better understanding of the differences in outcomes for women. This web-based visualisation tool allows users to view and customise charts based on the key metrics within the FOSPD and will be updated periodically when new annual statistics are published.

Successes

Since publication of the FODSP in January 2023, we have completed 20 out of the 51 commitments. We are making good progress on most of the remaining commitments and expect these to be delivered by the end of the Delivery Plan. Examples of progress to date are set out below.

Aim 1

There has been an increased focus on early intervention and diversion, with the aim of seeing fewer women entering the criminal justice system and reoffending. Work includes:

• completion of the Liaison and Diversion (L&D) Women’s Pathway Review. This has enabled the development and dissemination of key principles to ensure a high quality and gender specific female L&D service.

• investing up to £14 million in 40 Women’s centres and charities between 2022-25. These services support women in, or at risk of entering the criminal justice system, by providing holistic support to address reasons for offending, such as mental health issues, accommodation needs, experience of abuse, and finance issues.

• building on our Concordat (2020), which provided guidance to support local areas to work in a more joined up, multi-agency way when providing services for women in or at risk of contact with the criminal justice system, many of whom have multiple and complex needs. In addition, we are investing a further £1 million between 2022 and 2025 in four regional areas to aid their development of multi-agency, Whole System Approaches (WSAs).

Aim 2

Significant work has also been completed to support the effective management of women in the community:

• In June 2023, we published an evaluation of a pilot relating to probation’s pre-sentence reports (PSRs). This tested an alternative delivery model to increase the quality and quantity of PSRs for priority cohorts including women. As a result, successful elements of the pilot have been integrated into national delivery, including continued early identification and preparation of cases for PSRs targeted for women where appropriate.

• In the South-Central region, the probation service has launched a ‘Pathfinder to Improved Pre-Sentence Advice’ (PIPA) project. To help support swift sentencing, women will now receive full, written PSRs providing the court with specific information on her circumstances and the suitability of varying sentencing options. This improvement will help divert women away from short custodial sentences towards more effective community options.

• We have developed briefing materials for the judiciary to raise awareness of the specific issues faced by women and available community-based sentencing options. These materials have been shared at existing regional engagement events with judicial colleagues (including sentencers and legal advisors) and delivered to frontline court practitioners.

• In June 2023, we began piloting Intensive Supervision Courts (ISCs), which divert offenders away from short custodial sentences and into enhanced community-based sentences. ISCs aim to target the root causes of offending behaviour by providing wraparound multi-agency support to address offenders’ underlying needs. A women’s ISC is being piloted at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court, with two substance misuse ISCs at Teesside and Liverpool Crown Courts. The pilot will run for 18 months and is subject to a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation programme, which will assess various aspects of the ISCs including the impact on offender outcomes, as well as their value for money.

• Responding to demand, the capability of probation to drug test those on drug recovery requirements (DRRs) has been increased. The total number of DRRs commenced between April and June 2023 was around 1,690 - an increase of 12.2% from the same period in 2022. Probation can now monitor compliance more effectively and have introduced a screening tool to help identify drug needs and highlight these to the court prior to sentencing. To support this delivery, over 50 Health and Justice Co-ordinators have been recruited across every probation region.

Aim 3

Some women have committed crimes of such gravity that custody is the only sentencing option open to the court. To deliver better outcomes for these women, we are investing up to £14 million between 2022 and 2025 to ensure that custody offers women rehabilitative support and an environment where they can address the root cause of their offending behaviour.

• We are funding specialist posts that will help us better meet the needs of women. These include additional family workers to support relationships with children; the introduction of four social workers in women’s prisons; health and perinatal leads recruited to all Mother and Baby Units; and Domestic and Sexual Abuse workers recruited into seven women’s prisons

• An Early Days service has been mobilised in five women’s prisons to increase support for women at this challenging time.

• We recognise that Young Adult women face particular challenges in custody and have mobilised pilots in two women’s prisons aimed at improving outcomes for this cohort.

• Staff have a key role in supporting women in custody, and we have introduced bespoke training for new prison officers in the Women’s estate.

These measures will provide vital support to women in custody that will help to improve safety, including reducing the high levels of self-harm amongst female prisoners, and improving rehabilitative outcomes.

Aim 4

A range of work has been undertaken to improve outcomes for women on release from custody, including:

• Identification (ID) and Banking Administrators appointed in all women’s prisons to ensure that women have bank accounts when leaving custody.

• Prison employment leads have been recruited, and Employment Hubs and Advisory Boards set up in every women’s prison to increase women’s chances of securing employment on release.

• Introduction of nine FTE Strategic Housing Specialists working across the female estate. They are responsible for strengthening partnership working with key partners, including Local Authorities, and housing providers, to reduce the number of prison leavers released into homelessness.

• We have developed women-specific guidance to focus on the barriers faced by women leaving prison and identify examples of good practice.

There is one area of the FOSDP where we have faced particularly significant challenges, leading us to review delivery plans for our commitment to expand the women’s custodial estate to create more open prison places, providing a greater geographical spread and help with resettlement needs. Prison builds are complex capital projects, which are being delivered within challenging market conditions. As with other construction programmes, plans have been affected by high levels of inflation, which have had a material impact on estimated costs. Amid these ongoing fiscal challenges, we are taking a responsible approach and pausing our plans to build, while we consider the impact of such pressures. We remain committed to delivering gender-specific and trauma-informed (GSTI) approaches that will support more effective rehabilitation for women in the criminal justice system and have already made good progress developing designs for open and closed GSTI accommodation for the women’s estate. We have secured planning approval for three of the five sites (in the case of one site this is subject to Section 106 agreement), with work continuing to secure planning approval for the remaining two. GSTI design work completed to date will stand us in good stead, subject to fiscal considerations, for recommending the building of such accommodation in the future. This will further support achievement of our outcomes in relation to women in custody.

Focus for the year ahead

Looking ahead, we remain committed to the full implementation of the FOSDP. We will also respond to the challenges and opportunities of the changing landscape since the FOSDP was published. Key areas of focus will include:

Demand and capacity

In October 2023, the Lord Chancellor announced a package of measures to address the pressure on our custodial estate, some of which have been introduced in the Sentencing Bill and are now being considered by Parliament. We anticipate that the proposed presumption to suspend custodial sentences of less than 12 months, whilst applying to both men and women, is likely to have a particular impact on female offenders - in 2022, 70% of immediate custodial sentences for females were under 12 months compared to 56% of males. Individual sentences will be subject to judicial discretion, and many women will serve robust community sentences, which could include electronic monitoring, curfew, or a residential requirement, alongside receiving support to address offending behaviours.

Remand

There has been a 25% increase in the remand women’s population from December 2022 to December 2023. As of December 2023, women on remand accounted for 22% of the women’s prison population. In tackling this, we will continue to work closely with key stakeholders including the police, Crown Prosecution Service, and the Judiciary. This work will include seeking to further identify and remove existing barriers to the use of bail for women and to raise awareness of the scope to impose electronically monitored (EM) conditions of court bail as an alternative to remanding defendants in custody, where appropriate.

Residential accommodation in the community

The approval of planning permission for the Residential Women’s Centre in Swansea was a key milestone for this work. Whilst we consider the next steps for the Swansea site, we are developing the evidence base through our community grants funding supporting new residential facilities offering an alternative to custody.

Health

We recognise that many female offenders have significant health needs, including significant health inequalities, mental health and substance misuse issues. In partnership with NHS England and HM Courts and Tribunal Service, we are piloting a Regional Health and Justice Hub in Northeast England. This will run throughout 2024, as a minimum, and seeks to improve the way that courts, health services and prisons work together locally to better support defendants with severe mental illness by directing them to the appropriate treatment whether that be in hospital or the community.

We will continue to work to increase the uptake of community sentence treatment requirements. By mid-2024, primary care Mental Health Treatment Requirements will be available to sentencers in all criminal courts, with women-specific pathways to ensure that support is tailored to the specific needs of women.

The independently chaired Women’s Health and Social Care Review of the women’s custodial estate (November 2023) showed that women in prison have disproportionately higher levels of health and social care needs than their male counterparts. A new joint NHS England and HMPPS Board will develop a three-year delivery plan by Spring 2024, which will be underpinned by £21 million of health funding.

Evidence

We will continue to build an evidence base for what works for women to improve outcomes at all points of the justice system. This will help to inform future work programmes, including investments and interventions, ensuring we have a criminal justice system that effectively addresses the specific needs of women through a gender specific and trauma responsive approach.

This work will be supported by ongoing structural changes within HMPPS, which will enable closer working between Prisons and Probation, providing an opportunity to develop a more consistent operational delivery model that is aligned with the aims of the FOSDP. Our ambition is to develop and share a model that ensures a joined-up journey for women serving sentences in custody and the community, striking a balance between national consistency and regional flexibility.