Call to keep teenage girls out of custody
originally by: Children & Young People Now
published: 7th March 2012
Teenage girls are committing less crime, with a big fall in violent offences, but are ending up in custody over “minor misdemeanours” a parliamentary inquiry has found.
As part of a year-long inquiry into girls, the All Party Parliamentary Group APPG on Women in the Penal System found that the number of girls arrested each year has been falling since 2008.
In line with this, the number of disposals given to girls for offences has fallen from 59,236 in 2006/07 to 43,186 in 2009/10, a drop of 27.1 per cent.
The number of violent offences committed by girls has fallen from 17,415 in 2006/07 to 12,291 in 2009/10, a fall of 29 per cent.
The APPG, co-chaired by Baroness Corston and Kate Green MP, has called for the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales to be raised to 14 years in a briefing released today 7 March by the Howard League for Penal Reform.
Women’s prisons in desperate need of reform, says former governor
originally by: The Observer
published: 11th February 2012
One of the country’s most experienced prison governors has condemned the use of short-term sentences that put thousands of women behind bars each year.
In a letter to the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, Clive Chatterton states that his final role as governor of Styal’s women’s prison in Cheshire left him disturbed and bewildered. Chatterton, who spent 37 years working in prisons before retiring three months ago, says that urgent reform is needed and called for the government to vigorously pursue alternatives to jail.
He said that many judges and magistrates he had spoken to “acknowledged that many of these women did not require a custodial sentence but then ask: ‘What else can we do with them?’”
Chatterton is calling for a “warts-and-all review of the aims and intent of the use of custody”; an immediate end to short sentences; more women to be transferred to secure mental health units where they can receive the right care; and alternatives to prison that could be funded by the “huge” savings that would be derived from not jailing the third of women currently imprisoned for minor offences.
