Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-03
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Bradley (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, declaring my interest in the register as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust, I will make a brief contribution to wholeheartedly support Amendments 139 and 140, proposed my noble friend Lady Kennedy and other noble Lords. She introduced them expertly and I will not attempt to replicate any of that excellent material. As the Committee heard, the amendments would provide essential new protection for survivors involved in alleged offending which results from their experience of domestic abuse Members of this House will be aware, as I am from my 2009 report on mental health, learning disabilities and the criminal justice system, of the particularly high prevalence of mental health need among women in prison. It is getting worse. Ministry of Justice safety in custody statistics tell us that the annual rate of self-harm incidents for women in prison nearly doubled between 2012 and 2019, from 1,558 to 3,130 incidents per 1,000 women. This compares to an increase among male prisoners from 201 self-harm incidents per 1,000 men in 2012 to 650 in 2019. As we know and the Committee has heard tonight, the majority of these women are likely to be victims of domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women Further, women with a learning disability are more likely than those without to experience domestic abuse. Too little is still known about women with learning disabilities in prison, but they are likely to be far more over-represented compared to those in the community. A recent research report, published in 2018 by the Prison Reform Trust and KeyRing, entitled Out of the Shadows found that, of 24 women with learning disabilities who were in contact with or on the edge of the criminal justice system, most were driven into offending as a result of abuse by men. For example, this included one woman who had been repeatedly drugged and abused by her partner before retaliating and finding herself sentenced to prison. For some of the women, their learning disabilities may have been the result of traumatic brain injury, which is not always assessed and identified successfully The Government have acknowledged the strong links which often exist between women’s offending and their experience of abuse. However, I do not feel confident that the strong links are properly taken into account in criminal proceedings. The evidence presented by the Centre for Women’s Justice, the Prison Reform Trust and others suggests that practice on the ground is, at best, inconsistent and that many women do not even feel confident to disclose the abuse until they reach the relative safety of prison after they have been convicted. This is surely not good enough. It is certainly not clear to me why these survivors should not be entitled to the same level of protection as, for example, trafficking victims who are forced to offend as part of their exploitation, or householders facing an intruder in their home, as in the Tony Martin case, referred to so eloquently by my noble friend Lady Kennedy We have heard from the Government that they want to strike the right balance in dealing with these women as suspects and defendants. I therefore urge the Government to afford them the legal protection that they deserve from our justice system. It may well be a complex task, but it is surely not beyond us or our justice system.