‘Second chance’: why minister wants to jail fewer women in England and Wales | Prisons and probation

P.At was previously in trouble with the police when he was 16 and was kicked out of the care system with no skills, accommodation or support. About 50 years later, he heard a knock on the door again.

There had been a fire at the mansion where he lived, and another resident said he saw Pat start it. “I was at the police station for almost two days before appearing in the magistrate’s court,” he said, placing a finger on the back of his hand. “The judge said he would send it to the crown court and send me to prison.”

Pat, now 66, spent the next seven months on remand at HMP Bronzefield. When his case came to the royal court, he was acquitted. He struggles to walk, but when he gets out of prison he finds that his mobility car has been confiscated after the local authority stopped payments.

“Being in prison turned my life upside down,” he said. “Even now I still can’t get over the fact that I’m in prison. Words fail me. I have no money, I had to take out an emergency loan from universal credit to survive. And I’m still paying it back.”

CEO James Timpson, prisons minister in England and Wales, thinks women like Pat do not belong behind bars. During a visit last week to Alana House, a women’s center in Reading Managed by Assistance PactLord Timpson, who supports women in the criminal justice system, told ex-prisoners that their parents had cared for 90 children during their childhood, some of whom were simply babies who needed to be cared for while their mothers were in prison.

“What’s clear is that there are too many women in prisons who shouldn’t be there,” she said. “Some women need to go to prison for the crimes they’ve committed, but there are so many women who need to be moved out of prison and supported, and that’s what we want to try and do.”

Timpson, who visited to announce the Ministry of Justice’s new £31.6 million fund for women’s services, admitted the transition from managing director of her family’s shoe repair and key cutting business (unpaid) to government minister had not been easy.

To his Labor colleague who had to deal immediately with an overcrowding crisis. Sentencing ActWhich one was it? passed It came into force in January and replaced most sentences of one year or less with community sentences, allowing some people to be released earlier.

“I will describe the first few months as a traumatic experience because we had a capacity crisis,” he said. “But now I feel that real green shoots are emerging in many areas for which we are responsible, including the perspective of women’s justice.”

Timpson, a longtime observer of the criminal justice system. employed ex-convicts He said he was grateful to have had the chance to use the machinery of government to make a difference since 2002. “I believe very strongly that there are many people who deserve a second chance at life and can obtain the keys to drive change; it is worth sacrificing everything else,” he said.

Women make up only 4% of the prison population; their numbers dropped slightly from 3,600 to around 3,300 in October 2024. But for those involved, the statistics are relentlessly grim. Half of female prisoners victims of domestic violence and more than half suffered brain damage. If two thirds I have not committed a violent crimefemale prisoners nine times more likely to self-harm than men.

“My view is that there are a lot of women who are in the criminal justice system because they are victims,” Timpson said. “We need to help them.”

Timpson founded last year Women’s Justice Board It clearly aims to reduce the number of women in prison. in it first reportThe report, published on Monday, called for changes to the law so that pregnant women are only imprisoned in exceptional circumstances, and for new laws to reduce detentions and recalls.

He also called on the government to encourage police forces to keep women out of prison by using the following alternatives: delayed sentencesThis gives criminals additional time to deal with a problem that led them to commit a crime.

CEO Pia Sinha Prison Reform Foundation and a member of the board said successive governments had called for fewer women to be imprisoned without much change. She compared the formation of the Women’s Justice Board with the formation of the Youth Justice Board in 1998. reducing the youth prison population In England and Wales, from 3,200 in 2008 to 445 in 2024.

“When everyone works together you can really make a difference on the field,” Sinha said. “We now have a policy that affects the government and says, ‘We’ve been hearing this for 20 years, what are you going to do differently?’ We have a team of experts who say:

Speaking to Timpson at Alana House, Pat said the women’s center was a “lifeline” for her. After leaving school at 15, he took GCSE maths and English in prison, achieving the highest possible grade. She hopes she can now pay off her debt, get her mobility car back, and start volunteering to help other women coming out of prison.

“It’s like a piece of me is missing right now,” he said. “But I will get that missing piece back.”