Barrow Cadbury Trust welcomes Justice Secretary’s Women’s Justice Board announcement

We’ve worked for decades with partners to highlight the need for reform of women’s justice, including supporting the Corston Independent funders coalition, which has kept alive one of the main recommendations of the 2007 Corston Review that women should be diverted from prison and supported in the community.

And our funded partners Agenda Alliance Women in Prison and the Prison Reform Trust have campaigned tirelessly for the trauma-informed support women need if they are to successfully exit the criminal justice system.

In our work developing the T2A – Transition to Adulthood we have built up significant evidence on the need for a distinct approach for young adults 18-25 years old. We hope that when the Women’s Justice Board is formed it understands the ongoing and distinct life changes young adult women are going through and develops evidence based service for this cohort.

In 2023 the Ministry of Justice developed the long-awaited Delivery Plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on women’s offending, it is ready and waiting to be implemented with four clear aims: prevention and early intervention; reducing the use of prison whilst increasing the use of community sentences;
improving outcomes for women in custody; and improving outcomes for women on release.

The Women’s Justice Board should also adopt the recommendations from the Farmer Report on the role of families, and ensure multi-agency engagement and the involvement of third sector organisations in the delivery of services.

It also needs to explicitly include action to address the double disadvantage experienced by Black, Asian and minoritised women which has been recently documented by an alliance of organisations headed up by Hibiscus Foundation.

Partnership working with specialist charities such as those in the National Women’s Justice Coalition is the key to delivering impact. Let’s hope the new Board will seize the opportunity to collaborate with our funded partners and create a new system of transformational justice for women.