T1. Mr McNulty asked the Minister of Justice to explain why the number of women in prison has increased by 200% since before the pandemic, when there were just 40 women in prison, as, at a meeting with the Criminal Justice Inspection (CJINI) last week, he was told that there are now 120 women in prison here, more than half of whom are on remand. (AQT 971/22-27)

There are a number of reasons why there are more women in prison today as opposed to during the pandemic. First of all, there was a concerted effort to remove people from the prison system during the pandemic, and many people have brought cases forward post pandemic that might otherwise have happened during that period. That is one reason: delay. The second reason is the economic crisis. Many of the women who are committed to our care will be guilty of acquisitive crime. It may be drugs-related or it may be out of desperation, but it will often lead people to be in the criminal justice system. Therefore, the increase in numbers, I suppose, tallies with that.

However, there is a wider issue that the Member hints at, and that is the number of people in the prison system more generally who are on remand. The Criminal Justice Board is doing a bespoke piece of work to look at the reasons for remand, because the numbers seem to be incredibly high. They are incredibly high throughout the UK, but they are higher in Northern Ireland. We need to look at the reasons why people are committed to prison rather than given community-based sentences, and, as a Department, we are also looking at how we can build more confidence in community-based sentences that will allow judges not to send people to prison where a potentially better alternative rehabilitation measure may exist in the community.

Thank you, Minister, for your answer. The question related to the number before the pandemic, not during the pandemic. Can the Minister outline what measures her Department and her Executive colleagues are adopting and implementing to tackle the reasons for offending, including challenges faced around housing, addiction, poverty, trauma and employability?

As the Member demonstrates in his question, many of the issues that will prevent offending are not the responsibility of the Department of Justice. They fall to other Departments, whether that is the Department for the Economy, the Department for Communities or, indeed, other Departments beyond that. It is important, however, that we take a trauma-informed approach. We recognise that our women's prisons and those people in our women's prisons are a different category of offender, often driven by different motivations and behaviours. Therefore, it is important that we factor that in to the rehabilitation of the women who come into our care. That is something that the Prison Service has been leading on, in addition to all the work that goes on while people are in prison, to ensure that, rather than recycling people through the system, we can successfully rehabilitate people outside the prison system by finding them accommodation before they leave prison and by assisting them with access to, for example, key services such as the health service, the Housing Executive and others whilst they are still in prison, to set up a path for success rather than a cliff edge for failure.