Response to NAO Report

‘This comprehensive report makes for deeply depressing reading for those of us working to improve outcomes for women in contact with the criminal justice system. The lack of resources, the lack of an ability to meaningfully measure progress, the constant delays in the various workstreams and the lack of progress in securing the cross departmental working needed to improve this situation runs like a dark seam through the report. The Safe Homes initiative gave evidence to the NAO, focussed on persuading the Government to accept that releasing women ex-offenders into homelessness has to stop. Recent figures show that the proportion of women so released is as high as 77% from our largest women’s prison. To deliver on its own strategy, the Government needs to find and invest the modest sums required and learn from, and adopt, the initiatives already working in the volunteer/charity sector in a wide range of areas including housing post-release. In particular, it has to accept that discharging any woman into homelessness, never mind the staggering high numbers that we are seeing, is not in the best interests of the individual, society or the taxpayer.’