We asked the Ministry if it had assessed the impact of spending the £200 million on prison places for women. It has not. It told us this was because it has a duty to provide places for those sent to prison by the courts and its projections are that increased police numbers would result in an additional 500 prison places for women being required.22 The Ministry told us that implementing the Female Offender Strategy might bring that number down, and if so, it would not need all the additional prison places.23 However this modelling of expected need for 500 more prison places did not take into account any effect from the female offender programme such as more people being diverted away from prison sentences.24 The Ministry and HMPPS told us the newer prison places will be higher quality than some existing places and if they were not needed older places could be closed, but that was not an explicit objective.25 Working with others