Too many women are in prison who simply shouldn’t be there. Many are experiencing acute mental health needs, and many are separated from children who need them at home. Most are victims of abuse and exploitation who have often been let down by the state agencies that should have protected them. Prison is deeply harmful, compounding existing challenges rather than helping to solve them. 

The Women’s Justice Board was appointed to provide vision and direction for the work to reduce women’s imprisonment and improve outcomes. We are pleased the government is publishing our recommendations today, and hope they will be accepted and acted on without delay.

Reducing women’s imprisonment requires complex, multidisciplinary work and we have tried to put forward practical solutions to the challenges involved, drawing on a rich evidence base. We look forward to a continuing conversation with policy makers, practitioners and women with lived experience of the criminal justice system, as to how these and further actions can help achieve the changes in culture and systems that are needed for all women in contact with the criminal justice system – including Black, minoritised and migrant women, and young women. 

There are real opportunities now for change, including through implementation of the sentencing review and criminal courts review. Focused work will be needed to ensure these work well for women. We’ve therefore recommended a modest amount of additional resource to be dedicated to improving strategic leadership, coordination and knowledge exchange. We believe this will be key to driving reforms and supporting local multi-disciplinary work. We have proposed the introduction of incentives and accountability mechanisms to ensure individual agencies, such as the police, local authorities and healthcare services, play their part in achieving change. We have emphasised the need for adequate and sustainable funding for women’s specialist services, and welcome the new funding that has been announced today.

The government’s next steps are an opportunity not only to reduce women’s imprisonment, but also to demonstrate its determination to transform how we respond, as a society, to the abuse and exploitation of women and girls. We need to recalibrate everyone’s understanding of what the criminal justice system is actually for, and ensure – at last – that it is working for women. 

To read Clinks’ response to today’s publication of the Women’s Justice Board report and the accompanying announcement on diversion funding, see here