06 December 2007
In brief
Significantly cutting the number of women sent to jail could save millions of pounds a year, new research claims. The study from the New Economics Foundation calls for greater use of community-based sentences for thousands of non-violent women offenders. This, it says, would save up to £10,000 per inmate and improve the life chances of the women’s children. Its research backs recommendations made in a report by Baroness Corston, Vulnerable Women in Prison, which called for the UK’s 15 women’s prisons to be phased out and replaced by small custodial units housing only women who have been jailed for more than two years.
