Women’s Aid respond to the Independent Sentencing Review

Isabelle Younane, Head of External Affairs at Women’s Aid, said:

“Since the Early Release Scheme, or SDS40, was announced, Women’s Aid has been deeply concerned that government plans to tackle the serious issue of prison overcrowding are being carried out at the expense of safety for women and girls. We welcome recommendations made in the Sentencing Review to improve protections for survivors, including through the introduction of a domestic abuse flag which will seek to exclude perpetrators of abuse from the presumption against short custodial sentence, but are concerned that the success of these measures will rely too heavily on the discretion of judges. We are pleased to see a recommendation to ensure mandatory training for judges on violence against women and girls, but are concerned that so far there has been limited appetite within the judiciary to take this forwards. Given how misunderstood domestic abuse is throughout the criminal justice system, training should be designed and delivered in collaboration with expert organisations, like Women’s Aid and our members.

Women’s Aid welcomes much-needed uplift in funding for probation services, as we know that these services have been significantly under-resourced and failing survivors. However, we are concerned with ongoing failings of MAPPA safeguarding arrangements. Local specialist domestic abuse services are frequently being excluded from these, despite the critical and live-saving planning for survivors they bring, and this needs to change. It’s also crucial that MAPPA is undertaken pre-release, and for every inmates with a domestic abuse flag.

If the government is to achieve its important goal of halving violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade, survivors of domestic abuse and other forms of VAWG need to be considered through the criminal justice system.”