Limited funding
The Ministry of Justice has made limited progress on its Female Offender Strategy to improve outcomes for women in the criminal justice system because it has not prioritised investment in this work, according to a report published yesterday by the National Audit Office (NAO). As readers know, women in the justice system have distinct needs and worse outcomes than men. They are more likely than men to have specific vulnerabilities that drive their offending, including experiences of trauma and abuse, and they also pose less of a serious risk to the public. In 2018, the Ministry of Justice (the Ministry) published the Female Offender Strategy (the strategy) to reduce the number of women entering the criminal justice system, and increase the proportion of women offender managed in the community. The strategy contained over 50 commitments which ranged from publishing guidance for police working with vulnerable women, to creating residential women’s centres (RWCs) as an alternative to prison.
The female offender programme was established to oversee the strategy, but the Ministry decided against setting targets for the programme’s main objectives – such as how many women it expected to divert from the criminal justice system or give community sentences – because they would depend on actions from independent bodies, including the judiciary.
The NAO criticises this, saying that without clearly setting out the scale of its ambitions, the MoJ could not estimate what funding would be required to deliver the programme, or what savings the programme might achieve.
Funding
The MoJ has constantly issued press releases talking about the amount of funding it is making available for the female offender strategy, so it is extremely helpful to see the NAO unpick these announcements and clarify exactly what has and hasn’t been spent.
The Ministry allocated limited funding and resources to the programme because it prioritised other strategic aims, including dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The only funding it initially made available was £5.1 million in 2018-20 for supporting women’s services in the community. Across the 2020 and 2021 single year Spending Reviews, the Ministry allocated to the programme just £13.1 million of the minimum £40 million that the programme team initially estimated it would need for certain aspects of the programme. The programme team focused funding on developing community options for women, in part because it was the most urgent need.
Limited progress
Despite its focus on community options specifically for women, the Ministry has made limited progress. Funding to providers for women’s services was restricted to short-term grants of less than a year because of the constraints of the government’s one-year Spending Reviews. Providers told the NAO that this made it difficult to plan ahead and sustain services. The Ministry’s plans to pilot five residential women’s centres have also been considerably delayed because of difficulties finding a site for its first centre in Wales, and resource issues. Only £500,000 of an expected £3.5 million will be spent on these centres in 2021-22.
Lack of clarity
The NAO criticises the MoJ for not having a good understanding of whether it is making progress towards the strategy’s wider aims. No performance measures were set for the strategy, which means the Ministry cannot identify if trends in the data on women in the criminal justice system align with its objectives. As a result, the Ministry’s ability to make joined-up decisions has been limited.
The NAO cites the MoJ’s plans to create an additional 500 prison places for women, which, did not consider any likely change in demand that might come from more women being managed in the community.
Recommendation
This NAO report clarifies what many in the field have been thinking – and saying – for some time: that the MoJ has spent more time talking about a step-change in the way women are treated in the Criminal Justice System than doing something about it.
The NAO recommends that the Ministry puts in place specific goals for the strategy’s main objectives, and makes a full assessment of the funding required to meet its aims. It says the MoJ should also set out how it will measure progress and evaluate the success of the programme.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here.
