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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: Yes, I would agree with that. Isolation and imprisonment for women causes more problems because most of them have primary caring responsibilities. They might be escaping abuse in their home, and if they come out and find that they have no home and that their children have been taken into care, it is even more difficult for them to get back on their feet. We must look at better ways of punishing women than just locking them up. We need to consider more effective community punishments for women and men; we cannot keep on building prisons. Intermittent custody offers the greatest benefit to women prisoners because it enables them to continue to mother their children. However, they have the greatest problem in accessing such an option because there are fewer women's prisons and a relative sparsity of offenders. Many women would have to travel long distances to reach their place of custody. The answer may be to provide small local units or it may be to restrict the number of women given custodial sentences, which is what the Committee suggested. I hope that a new sentencing regime will provide more opportunity for community sentences.