Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert writes… Fixing the women’s prison estate

By | Fri 25th October 2013 - 2:05 pm

After only  a couple of weeks with women offenders under his remit, Liberal Democrat Lord and Minister in the Ministry of Justice, Tom McNally has this morning announced what may be a step-change in the way Britain handles the women’s estate.

Six years after the Corston review, which bemoaned the lack of a tailored and differentiated approach to dealing with female offenders, we are finally seeing her recommendations being implemented. Corston called for an approach that recognised and reacted to the needs of women in the prison estate. Following on from this our Conference called for a radical change in the way women were handled throughout the criminal justice system and in Government we have delivered on your demands.

Thanks to Tom’s hard work on this issue, new open units for women will be trialled in HMP Styal before we look at rolling it out across the country. These centres will ensure women are kept near their local communities enabling them to maintain links with family and often children, as well as providing them with all the services they require to ensure they can get back on their feet and away from the traps of reoffending on release.

In time we hope these will replace the large open prisons which whilst may have all the desired services in-house are located in the middle of nowhere, thereby uprooting women from their families and communities which are so vital in getting them back on track.

We promised a rehabilitation revolution and in Government we are delivering. Well done Tom!

* Julian Huppert was the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge from 2010-15

Read more by or more about or .
This entry was posted in News.
Advert

2 Comments

  • Richard S 26th Oct '13 - 7:47pm

    Those sound like very good aims. Would we also support similar reforms of the men’s system to keep them close to their families and support networks or do the arguments stack up differently? I’m interested in what assumptions are being made about the differences between male and female prisoners in general.

  • Michael Parsons 27th Oct '13 - 12:34pm

    @ Richard S

    Hear hear! Families also need fathers. Children starved, beaten and killed by their mothers knew that too. Surely it depends on what sort of mother or father we are talking about? The Babes in the Wood is not just a fairy-tale, after all.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Jana
    Interesting, though I have concerns about the idea of the State having control of fiscal policy (and not monetary policy) but with the requirement of producing ...
  • Peter Martin
    @Jana, "Liberals do not believe it is the role of the state to give people jobs" Keynes was a Liberal and he always argued for full employment....
  • paul barker
    All the figures on Immigration are more than a Year out of date, there are figures which are only 6 Months behind but they are Projections. What we know from ...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    Thank you Tom. As an immigrant who built a business here, this resonated, particularly the line about controlling immigration not being the same as condemning i...
  • Jana
    “ The interesting thing was it was not 9-0 given that the language in the 14th Amendment could not have been clearer.” With due respect, it was precisely...