by Carmen Robin-D’Cruz, Stephen Whitehead, Bami Jolaoso, and Lucy Slade

Women represent a relatively small proportion of people who commit crimes in England and Wales, and they tend to commit less-serious crimes and pose a lower risk of harm to the public than men.1 2 In 2021 they accounted for only 14% of those arrested and 5% of those in prison.3 However, women who offend can also be some of the most vulnerable in society. As the 2018 Ministry of Justice Female Offender Strategy notes, “Many experience chaotic lifestyles involving substance misuse, mental health problems, homelessness, and offending behaviour – these are often the product of a life of abuse and trauma.”4 Moreover, we know that criminalising women can make it harder for them to access routes out of the issues driving their offending, creating barriers to them finding or maintaining employment and accommodation and pushing them towards crisis. This is why pre-court diversion, which seeks to offer a swift and meaningful response to offending while reducing or avoiding harmful criminal justice system involvement,5 has been recognised as crucial for this cohort. As Baroness Corston observed in her landmark review of women in the justice system, women are different from men in terms of both the factors that cause them to offend and their paths to desistence.6 This means that, to effectively meet women’s needs – and to reduce the number of women entering the criminal justice system, which is the first priority of the Female Offender Strategy7 – a gender-specific approach to pre-court diversion for women is essential. This briefing aims to support practitioners seeking to develop or improve gender-specific pre-court diversion schemes. It will: • Lay out the policy landscape around women’s diversion; • Outline the evidence on why diversion is especially important for women, including: i) the need for a gender-specific approach given women’s distinct offending patterns and needs, ii) effective practice for working with women who offend and iii) outcomes from existing schemes; • Provide a case study of a current successful diversion scheme tailored for women; and • Distil this into overarching best practice principles for pre-court diversion for women. 

London: Centre for Court Innovation, 2025. 13p.  

By Naomi Delap and Liz Hogarth,

Our justice system, designed for men, is not working for women. Our prisons are full of trauma: over 60 per cent of women in prison have experienced domestic violence and more than half have experienced abuse as a child. Our prisons are bad at rehabilitating and deterring women from further offending; instead, they actively harm them and their children. Racially minoritised women are further disadvantaged: overrepresented at every point in the system and more likely than white women to be remanded and receive a sentence in the Crown Court. The human and financial cost of the system’s failure is significant.

The Labour government has announced a bold approach to respond to these issues. The creation of a Women’s Justice Board and its new strategy will, it is stated, reduce the number of women in prison and tackle the root causes of women’s offending by driving early intervention, diversion and alternatives to custody. If these outcomes are achieved, there will be less crime and fewer victims; and women, their families and their communities will benefit.

This new direction is a cause for celebration. If the initiative is to work, however, it is imperative we learn from the lessons of the past in order to avoid making the same mistakes; and look to other models for solutions in order to deliver, finally, a justice system that works for women.

London; Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 2025. 24p.