By law in England and Wales, defendants in criminal proceedings have a right to bail while awaiting trial or sentencing. The right to bail can be overturned and custodial remand imposed, only as an exceptional measure of last resort. Foreign national women are more likely to be remanded in custody than their British counterparts, often for less serious offences. They make up a significant and increasing proportion of prison admissions on remand, raising concerns that compliance with national and international standards of justice is being eroded in practice. This research explores these disparities by examining the context and processes in which bail decisions are made in England and Wales.

By law in England and Wales, defendants in criminal proceedings have a right to bail while awaiting trial or sentencing. The right to bail can be overturned and custodial remand imposed, only as an exceptional measure of last resort. Foreign national women are more likely to be remanded in custody than their British counterparts, often for less serious offences. They make up a significant and increasing proportion of prison admissions on remand, raising concerns that compliance with national and international standards of justice is being eroded in practice. This research explores these disparities by examining the context and processes in which bail decisions are made in England and Wales.

The overarching aim of this study was to examine and explore the barriers to resettlement for foreign national women living in the community in the UK, and to shed light on the complex ways in which non-citizen immigration status shapes the lived reality of resettlement for this group. In recent years, there has been an increased focus by the UK government on the deportation of ‘foreign national criminals’ on completion of their sentence, an emphasis that has geared foreign national women’s pathways through the CJS strongly towards the possibility of deportation, over rehabilitation and resettlement. Yet, many foreign national women are released into the community post sentence – indeed, 260 women in 2017 (Ministry of Justice 2019), in addition to women serving community sentences. By interviewing women in open, semi-structured conversations, my aim was to identify and gain much needed insight into the challenges they face, giving space for women to voice the struggles – often painfully sustained and unyielding – that shape their daily lives in the community and render rehabilitative goals impossible. By interviewing practitioners, I aimed to identify the barriers they come up against in providing support and to ask how these could be addressed. Ultimately, the research makes recommendations for urgently needed improvements to current provision for this group.

This study focused on twelve women who received a direct pathway for housing following their release from prison. Using data collated through semi-structured interviews gathered over a 12-month period, the study followed the lives of the women as they settled in to their homes after varying terms in prison. The findings revealed that some of the women had little or no support for a need for housing previously and that a direct through the gate pathway to housing evidenced in this report produced positive outcomes that benefitted the participants and in some cases, their children. The findings revealed, that long-term housing needs were not part of resettlement planning – instead inappropriate assessments and placements into temporary accommodation were consistent avenues that addressed a short-term response for the providers of services and did not reflect or accept the complexities of women’s lives. Furthermore, the study evidenced the use of the “Housing First” model and the benefits this brought for the women in that they were able to flourish and readily adapt to life as women in the community and begin to leave their time in prison, behind them.

The overall numbers of girls in the youth justice system and in the secure estate have fallen rapidly over the past decade. The recent decline in the use of custody is very welcome but poses significant challenges for the commissioning of placements, custodial establishments and resettlement services. Girls have become increasingly overlooked by the penal system at both a policy and a practice level and their diminishing minority in custody has exacerbated the marginalisation of their needs. Analysis of the existing literature has underlined the damaging and disruptive nature of incarceration, identified a lack of policy focus on the female population in the youth secure estate and found a paucity of available data about the nature of recent custodial sentencing, remand and placements for girls.

The primary aim of this research project is to critically examine the use of penal custody for girls in England and Wales, in order to fill a gap in the existing research, policy and practice literature. This study aimed to address this gap by analysing recent custody data, to investigate how penal detention is being used for girls from a gendered perspective.

This Northern Ireland based research focuses on the impact of domestic abuse and its implications for women who offend so that more appropriate responses can be identified and introduced across the criminal justice system.

Indeterminate Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) is one of the most controversial sentences in the history of British sentencing, creating a ‘general and systemic legal failure’ (Laws LJ in Wells (2007)). Female IPP prisoners represent an often forgotten and overlooked minority, stuck in the creaking penal system. This research provides the first empirical exploration of female prisoners on IPP still in prison, despite the abolition of the sentence in 2012.

In 2014, legislation was introduced in Wales that placed new obligations on local authorities to
prevent homelessness. If effective, the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 (hereafter referred to as the Act)
should provide greater assistance and support to households not considered 'in priority need'.
However, the Act also removed priority need status for prison leavers, meaning local authorities no
longer have an automatic duty to secure accommodation for people released from prison homeless.

In the initial years after the introduction of the Act, and at a time when homelessness is on the rise,
this report provides an insight into whether this housing policy is 'fit for purpose' for women leaving
– and often returning to – prison and provides recommendations for how policy and practice can be
improved to better support them.

This research explores the lived experiences of resettlement for street sex-working women alongside the views of professionals from community-based projects that have supported this group in their transitions from custody to the community. The study considers the challenges facing women on the day they leave prison and also the wider resettlement process: what preparation and planning takes place prior to release and the experiences and difficulties encountered by women once they have returned to life in the community.

This study stems from the author’s work as a manager with the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI), with particular responsibility for the INSPIRE Women’s Project. The research explores the transition of women from prison into the community through the women’s own accounts — within the context of Northern Ireland — and tests the view that, if women can sustain periods in the community following release beyond twelve weeks, the likelihood of successful re-integration is improved. The research used a longitudinal qualitative methodology centered on in-depth, life history interviews with women pre- and post-custody.

The aim was to explore the experiences of black and minority ethnic women in resettlement in order to form a picture of resettlement from their perspective and to determine what, if any, role ethnic culture played in resettlement. Four questions were formed as guidance:
1. What are the resettlement needs of minority ethnic women?
2. What role does ethnic culture play in the resettlement of minority ethnic women in the UK?
3. How do minority ethnic women access and understand resettlement services? Is this influenced by their ethnic culture? If yes, to what degree, and how?
4. How are some providers successfully engaging these women? What are the ‘challenging’ areas to work on in making services accessible and meaningful to these women?

The Women’s Turnaround Project (TWTP) provides female offenders and those at risk of offending with a gateway to multi-service support on a voluntary basis. Each client is
allocated a key worker to facilitate support in a wide variety of areas. The purpose of this research was threefold:
• To explore attachment to parents during childhood and adolescence in the clients engaging with TWTP: Was a ʻsecure baseʼ lacking in childhood/adolescence and prior to intervention?
• To examine whether attachment needs are addressed by TWTP: Does the key worker and client relationship provide a ʻsecure baseʼ for female offenders during the
resettlement process? If so, how is this achieved and what are the difficulties faced?
• To highlight good practice and make suggestions to improve future practice for TWTP, the Probation Service and other agencies working with women during the resettlement process.