REFORM OF THE WOMEN'S PRISON SYSTEM

EDM number 288 in 1991-92, proposed by Sylvia Heal on 27/11/1991.

That this House regrets that neither the Woolf Report nor the Government White Paper on Prison Reform make any significant mention of the outstanding problems facing women prisoners; views with concern the findings of recent research, that women with fewer convictions are more likely to be sent to prison than their male counterparts and that women prisoners are punished more frequently than men; believes that separating babies and children from their mothers restricts the development of the child and can do long-term damage to the relationship; recommends that prison, as the most serious sanction available to the criminal justice system, should be used only as a last resort for women convicted of minor offences, pregnant women or those who have dependent children; and calls upon the Government to reverse the decision, taken when the Conservatives were elected to office in 1979, to abandon the only review of women's prisons, and to treat reforming the women's prison system as a principal objective of public policy.

This motion has been signed by a total of 79 MPs, 4 of these signatures have been withdrawn.