Theft, violence against the person and ‘miscellaneous crimes
against society’ are the most common reasons women are arrested
in London. [1]
Since the closure of HMP Holloway those placed in custody are
sent to serve their sentence outside of the capital, which can
exacerbate challenges around maintaining family contact and ties
with the community.
Women make up a small, but significant, number of the overall
number of offenders in London, however, they are a distinct group
that often have very specific needs in relation to rehabilitation
and the prevention of offending. 53 per cent of women in prison
have said they experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as
a child and many report having been victims of domestic
violence. [2]
The Police and
Crime Committee will tomorrow begin
its investigation into women in the justice system.
This meeting will focus on: the extent to which the closure of
HMP Holloway has affected the rehabilitation of London’s women in
prison, the provision of specialist support services for women
offenders, and the current and potential effectiveness of MOPAC’s
proposals to support the rehabilitation of women offenders
through a Female Offender Service.
The guests are:
-
Dr Kate Paradine, Chief Executive, Women in
Prison
-
Helga Swidenbank, Director of Probation,
London CRC
-
Jenny Earle, Programme Director - Reducing
women's imprisonment, Prison Reform Trust
-
Niki Scordi, Chief Executive, Advance
The meeting will take place on Wednesday 1
November from 10:00am in the
Chamber at City Hall (The Queen’s Walk, London
SE1).
Notes for Editors:
- Home Office, Arrests open data
2006-07 to 2015-16, October 2016. In 2015-16 the 'reason
for arrest' offence groups were updated to match the groups
used in crime statistics. This means that 2015-16 data broken
down by offence group are not all directly comparable with
previous data.
- See Prison Reform Trust, Why focus on reducing
women’s imprisonment?, February 2017.
-
Full Agenda papers.
