Minister presents plan to reduce number of female prisoners in England and Wales

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A new “women’s justice board” will be established to reduce the female prison population in England and Wales as part of a long-term effort to reduce the number of women in prisons, the justice secretary has said.

In a speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Shabana Mahmood rejected then Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard’s 1993 statement that “prisons work”, saying that “for women, prison doesn’t work”.

Labour has said it inherited a criminal justice system that was at “breaking point” when it won the general election in July, and in her first ten weeks in office Mahmood has faced record prison overcrowding, reducing prison capacity to just a few hundred places.

Nearly 2,000 prisoners were released earlier this month, with thousands more set to be released in October under temporary emergency measures that cut the prison sentence rate from 50 percent to 40 percent.

In her speech, Mahmood accused “guilty men in the previous government” of turning the prison system into “a disaster.”

The new women’s justice council would be tasked with intervening early to keep women out of the criminal justice system, improving community support and investigating specific issues facing young women in prison, she said.

The rate of self-harm among female prisoners is eight times higher than among males. Women aged 18 to 24 account for more than a third of incidents, despite making up less than 10 percent of the female prison population.

According to figures from the Ministry of Justice, there were 3,453 women in prison in England and Wales as of Friday, compared with 82,953 male prisoners.

According to HM Prison Service, there are 123 prisons in England and Wales, 12 of which are for women in England. Mahmood described them as “desperate places” that led female offenders into a life of crime rather than helping them rehabilitate.

About two-thirds of female offenders sentenced to prison terms have not committed a violent crime and more than half of female offenders were victims of domestic violence, the ministry said in a press release announcing Mahmood’s planned reforms.

According to the Ministry of Justice, women serving short prison sentences are “significantly more likely to re-offend” than women serving non-prison sentences.

The new body would be headed by a minister and established within the Ministry of Justice, the ministry said.

Pia Sinha, director of the charity Prison Reform Trust, welcomed the creation of a separate female offender watchdog as a “historic moment for justice for women”.

“Many women are the primary caregivers of children, meaning prison can have a devastating impact on those left outside, as well as on the women themselves,” she said.

Sinha added that to be effective, the women’s justice council must “provide a framework for better use of liaison and diversion services and alternatives for women in the community”.

Mahmood also pledged to make progress on Labour’s manifesto pledge to give all rape victims access to an independent lawyer to represent them, “rather than an accused or accuser”.

The change is aimed at reducing the number of victims who withdraw from rape cases (currently 60 percent) before they appear in court.