Minister for justice banned from visiting women's penal centres
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Version 0 of 1. The justice minister responsible for reducing the population of women's prisons has been banned by his civil servants from visiting the women's community centres that offer an alternative to custody because of commercial considerations. Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem minister, has been told that an ongoing privatisation of the probation service could be jeopardised if he made a visit to the centres, where women who have been convicted are made to work out their community sentences. The Ministry of Justice fears that by visiting a centre run by a provider seeking to take over probation services, or which may in the future want to bid for services, the minister could be seen to be showing favouritism. Hughes has been told that the controversial privatisation of the probation service could then be subject to a judicial review, with all the expense and delay that this would involve. Women's centres were introduced by the last Labour government to ensure female offenders – a quarter of whom were treated for mental illness before their incarceration – were punished outside prison. Suicide and murder rates in prisons in England and Wales have reached their highest levels in six years. In 2013 there were four alleged homicides – the highest number since 1998 – and 70 apparently self-inflicted deaths, more than at any time since 2008. Rachel Halford, director of Women in Prison, a campaigning organisation that helps women involved in the criminal justice system, said the ban was "absolute madness". She added: "To ban the minister for reducing the number of women in prison from visiting the alternatives is absolute madness. It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. And he has admitted it himself."Details of the ban emerged at a justice select committee hearing. Hughes admitted to MPs that it was one of the "biggest frustrations" of his job after being attacked over the situation by backbench MPs.He told the committee: "My frustration is that in England I have not been able to go to see the women's centres that do as important a job as the prisons do." The government's part-privatisation of the probation service kicked in last month with 35 probation trusts in England and Wales replaced by 21 community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) to supervise medium- to low-risk offenders and a new national probation service to supervise the remaining "high-risk" offenders. The government believes that work with short-term offenders should be done by the new CRCs after they are outsourced on a competitive basis with at least three bidders. However it has emerged that mutuals and charities, who were supposedly to make up 50% of bidders, are pulling out. Some areas such as Northumbria now have only one bidder. Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, has written to the competition and markets authority complaining that the contracts being offered to the private firms left are for 10 years and threaten to create a monopoly. In a letter seen by the Observer, Khan writes: "The government has no measures in place to guard against a small number of large providers picking up the majority of contracts. This could also end up creating a couple of large private sector monopolies, which is counter to the government's aim of improving competition." |