Abbi Ayers, Director of Strategic Development, National Women’s Justice Coalition  

In October 2024, organisations from across the criminal justice and women’s sectors welcomed the announcement that David Gauke would chair an Independent Sentencing Review (ISR) to re-evaluate our existing sentencing framework. A year on, and following the publication of the ISR’s final report in July 2025, the National Women’s Justice Coalition (NWJC) has finished applauding the scope and ambition of the ISR and taken stock of its recommendations. Today, alongside others, we are now asking, where do we go from here? 

The NWJC is an alliance of 26 women’s organisations, all experts in delivering trauma-informed, women-centred casework support to women affected by the criminal justice system. Collectively, we share a mission to reduce the stigmatisation and criminalisation of justice-involved women and advocate for better use of community sentencing. We were particularly encouraged to see the ISR report acknowledge and evidence the central and valuable role the voluntary sector plays in supporting these reforms, not least women’s organisations delivering the Women’s Centre Model. 

Voluntary community sector (VCS) organisations, and specifically women’s organisations, perceived the ISR to be a bold and critical undertaking. Collectively, we dared to hope it would have the potential to radically transform and embed more sustainable, equitable and gender-responsive approaches to sentencing women and girls, shifting the balance from punitive justice to effective prevention and rehabilitation once and for all. 

We know firsthand that women in contact with the criminal justice system experience specific challenges rooted in structural and systemic inequalities. Their criminalisation is often underpinned by disadvantage and discrimination, and their offending is driven by their lived experiences of violence and abuse, unsecure housing, mental ill health, poverty, debt, or substance use. 

While we welcome the ISR’s core recommendations, which reflect our collective asks, we cannot risk overlooking the simple fact that essential foundational work and policy development will be required to ensure the successful implementation of these recommendations. 

For starters, ISR recommendations must be fully aligned with the development of the Women’s Justice Board strategy and Delivery Plan. Anything less will lead to the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing! They must also be centred in the Home Office’s upcoming Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy to achieve the government’s aim to halve VAWG in a decade. 

We also need to see political and institutional alignment across the judiciary, probation, police, health, and local authorities. Without joined-up working and clear leadership from the government, the burden of reforms will continue to fall disproportionately on voluntary sector organisations. 

Robust accountability structures in implementation processes will be needed if reforms are to effectively translate into frontline practice. Independent mechanisms should be introduced to track implementation and measure impact. Published action plans, timelines, and independent evaluation and oversight will all be essential. 

Black, Asian, racially minoritised, and migrant women face systemic racism and discrimination throughout their contact with the criminal justice system and are consistently overrepresented and underserved within it. But despite the huge evidence base demonstrating these widespread racial disparities, the ISR missed a valuable opportunity to address and examine the intersectionality between race and sentencing policy. This was hugely disappointing. Women’s organisations see how Black and racially minoritised women are consistently over-policed, culturally stereotyped, more likely to be remanded and receive harsher sentences, and disadvantaged by a lack of culturally responsive support and access to legal representation. So, the omission of race from the ISR now risks that any policy reforms could replicate or even deepen these systemic and institutional inequalities. 

To effect meaningful and fundamental change, the government will need to address how race, gender, and class interact, influence and drive women’s offending behaviours before then adopting an intersectional approach to implementing the ISR recommendations and assessing their impact. Furthermore, the lived experiences and perspectives of Black, Asian and migrant women must be actively sought after and centred in future policy development. 

Lived experience expertise should also be embedded within governance and monitoring structures to ensure that the implementation and delivery of reforms authentically reflect the realities on the ground. Engagement events that facilitate consultation with experts by experience will yield the valuable insights and critique needed to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the ISR recommendations. Specifically, direct consultation with groups that are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system will be critical, including racially minoritised women, those with care-experience and young women and girls.  

Given the make-up of the NWJC, we are now focused on lobbying policymakers and parliamentarians to action the specific ISR recommendations that would uplift and increase the resources, capacity and resilience of the voluntary community sector to support women on community sentences.  

 

These include: 

• Recommendation 6.2 – Provide more sustainable funding for Women’s Centres (page 96).  

• Recommendation 7.2 – Increase funding available for the voluntary sector to support the Probation Service to manage people in the community and enable increased commissioning of local organisations (page 117).  

• Recommendation 7.3 – Expand the use of the voluntary sector to support people on community sentences and licence (page 118).  

 

Recognition is needed at the highest echelons of government as to how over-stretched and under-resourced the voluntary community sector currently is, and how the historic and consistent under-funding and de-funding of critical services, for all intents and purposes, has crippled the women’s sector to date.  

The costs of delivering women’s services will continue to increase, owing in no small part to rising operational costs, Employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) increase, and salary inflation due to changes in the minimum wage. We are simultaneously seeing demand for services and the complexity of women’s needs and safeguarding risks increase, too, particularly in relation to mental health. Consultation and collaboration with the VCS will be a vital next step to determine the realistic investment needed to support the rollout of the IRS recommendations.  

 We urgently need a cross-government ‘invest to save’ approach that ensures funding allocations are not diluted or overly complicated and that recognises the value and expertise of women’s organisations. A concerted move away from top-down models that marginalise the small, specialist organisations best placed to deliver meaningful change for women will be necessary, alongside protected, ring-fenced funding for community-led infrastructure and capacity building. 

Women’s organisations and other VCS providers must also be recognised by statutory agencies (including the police, judiciary, probation, health, housing and social care) as specialist, respected and equitable partners essential to the delivery of community sentences. They need to be represented in multi-agency meetings, consulted on service delivery and design, and centred in sentence planning.  

So, in the face of uncertainty and an ever-shifting social and political climate, women’s organisations should not be expected to blindly cheer and champion the ISR’s recommendations without further clarity and commitment from the government on what sustainable funding looks like.  

The Independent Sentencing Review was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul sentencing policy, and the women’s sector is committed to realising the full scope of its recommendations and stands poised and ready to get to work. But radical reforms rest on fundamental change. So, we remain beholden to those who have the power to fully support and embed the ISR recommendations, and we just hope they’re finally listening.  

Contact: AbbiA@togetherwomen.org