UK: Corston review calls for all womens' prisons to be shut
01 January 2007
Following the suicide of six women at HMP Styal over a 13 month period, the then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke commissioned the Labour peer Baroness Corston to assess the pressures faced by women in prison. The report, published on 13 March 2007, calls for all womens' prisons to be shut down over the next 10 years and to be replaced by a network of small, local, custodial units. Baroness Corston states that:
I was dismayed to see so many women frequently sentenced for short periods of time for very minor offences, causing chaos and disruption to their lives and families, without any realistic chance of addressing the causes of their criminality.
The review further recommends:
* Creating a "champion" for female offenders within government
* Developing an inter-departmental ministerial group to oversee women offender issues
* Changing the way criminal justice agencies work with women
* Ending of routine strip-searching in womens' prisons
* Improved sanitation conditions in prisons
Under the Labour government the number of women in prison has risen from 2,629 to 4,456. More than one-third of women in prison have no previous convictions, double the proportion of men. More than half of women in prison have experienced domestic violence; one in three has experienced sexual abuse; 80 per cent have no school qualifications; 40 per cent have been in local authority care.
The Home Office response has been to damn the report with the faintest of praise. Baroness Scotland has given an undertaking that "the Government will look at the issues it raises" but no minister has, to date, backed Baroness Corston's proposals. The report offers prison campaigners a clear opportunity to help force through radical change in the care of women offenders. A number of prison reform campaign groups have set up an online petition in support of the report, (see below). As important will be mobilisations in support of demonstrations called by prisoner rights activist Pauline Campbell, whose daughter Sarah took her own life at HMP Styal. Pauline is committed to organising a demonstration outside every prison where a death occurs.
For details of the planned demonstrations and to sign the petition in support of the Corston report see the Women In Prison website at www.womeninprison.org.uk
Corston Review: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/corston-report/