Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lefarydd.
People like to think that criminal justice happens to other people, to other families—that anybody who finds themselves in the criminal justice system deserves what they get, and that people get sent to prison to be punished. One of our jobs here is to remind ourselves, the legislators, that what we do has repercussions for real people and for their families, so I would like to open this evening’s Adjournment debate on the criminal justice system in Wales with an account of what happened to one family from Blaenau Ffestiniog: to 22-year-old Gwenno Ephraim, to her mother Karen Ephraim, to her half-sister and brother, and to her extended family. Dr Rob Jones and the Wales Governance Centre of Cardiff University allow us to understand the cracks in our criminal justice system in Wales. Gwenno’s story is what happens when real families fall between the gaps.
Gwenno’s mother first contacted my office in January 2022, seeking support after her daughter had attempted to kill herself. Gwenno was discharged from the local district hospital after two days in A&E. I am told that the mental health team were not making home visits—this was, to be fair, during the covid pandemic. A year later, Gwenno pleaded guilty to six charges at Caernarfon magistrates court, which included the assault of a healthcare worker at the Hergest mental health unit in Ysbyty Gwynedd. She was sentenced to 44 weeks in prison. This was her first experience of the criminal justice system. The family, of course, readily acknowledge that her victims deserve justice.
Despite promises of a women’s residential centre in Swansea since 2018, Wales has no prison or secure accommodation for women; neither are there any approved premises for women. Gwenno was sent just over 100 miles away to HMP Styal, outside Manchester, where she was held for a period of three months. Three months was not long enough for Gwenno to be able to get a proper diagnosis for her mental illness, but it was long enough to churn her life into chaos.
Despite being on suicide watch while in prison, Gwenno was released back into the community, where her refusal to engage was a sufficient reason for accommodation to be withdrawn. She could not stay with her mother, as her behaviour posed a threat to the younger children. This was the beginning of a vortex of bed and breakfast rooms, breaches of licence conditions, pointlessly short returns to HMP Styal, hand washing over terms like “capacity”, when Gwenno’s vulnerability was obvious, and harrowing mental health episodes in train stations, hospitals and north Wales seaside towns.
Although health and homelessness support through local authorities are devolved to Wales, criminal justice is not. Welsh women’s experience of the criminal justice system epitomises what Dr Rob Jones and Professor Richard Wyn Jones conceptualised as the “jagged edge” of justice in Wales. Despite not having a female prison, Wales has the third highest incarceration rate for women in western Europe. Like Gwenno, Welsh women are sent to prisons all across England, although predominantly to HMP Styal and HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire. Last year, 78% of those women—more than three quarters—were sentenced to 12 months or less, while nearly a quarter received a month or less. Such short sentences do nothing to rehabilitate female offenders, but they do plenty to derail lives. With a 45% increase in the numbers recalled to custody for breach of licence in Wales in 2024, Gwenno’s revolving door experience is far from unique.
It does not improve when we look at the wider picture, either. Wales has had a higher in-country imprisonment rate than England since 2019, with 167 prisoners per 100,000 head of population in 2024—the highest in western Europe. In fact, one in every 648 people from Wales was in prison last year. Of course, it is not just people from Wales; 35% of all prisoners held in Wales last year were from England, with 65% of them held at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham. That is not sustainable—and so says the PCS union at Berwyn. Staff are worried that as prisoners are released early under new Government plans, empty spaces will be filled by prisoners turned away from full prisons closer to home. Of course, it is not a one-way street; around 30% of prisoners from Wales were being held across 109 prisons in England, away from their families, support networks, culture and sometimes their first language, as was exactly the case for Gwenno.
That last point is important, considering that a recent study by Rob Jones and Gregory Davies found that Welsh-speaking prisoners have
“experienced widespread neglect of their needs and overt interferences with their use of the Welsh language”
in prison. Were prisons in Wales answerable to the Senedd, more stringent Welsh language requirements would apply and the language rights of Welsh speakers in prisons would very likely be more robust. As the UK Government deal with a prison crisis that incentivises filling spaces wherever they are available, the differing needs in Wales are all the more important for us to stress.
I say this following the news of HMP Parc’s approved expansion, despite serious concerns over safety and access to drugs, and the prison recording the highest number of deaths for a single prison in 2024—the joint highest ever recorded in England and Wales. Surely placing more people in a prison where the number of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults has risen by 15%, alongside a rise in self-harm and assaults on staff, is a recipe for disaster. Also, accounting for women and category A prisoners, who also cannot be accommodated in the Welsh prison estate, is providing Wales with 700 more prison places than we presently have Welsh prisoners really a sensible idea? This could see Wales’s in-country imprisonment rate surpass the average for the whole of Europe.
Of course, it is to be anticipated that prisoners are eventually released. In Wales, this is where the “jagged edge” is particularly clear—where the wraparound services to help ex-offenders are, of course, devolved. Gwenno was released on occasion without a fixed address, far from home.
The number of people released into homelessness from Welsh prisons rose by 34% in 2024-25, and we do not even know how many Welsh prisoners released as part of the Government’s SDS40 scheme—standard determinate sentence 40—between September 2024 and March 2025 were released into homelessness, because the Ministry of Justice did not provide that data when the Wales Governance Centre requested it. There is a real constitutional question on why data on the impact of UK-level decisions that have a knock-on effect on devolved services on the ground in Wales cannot be released. Communication and data tracking between relevant bodies is the bare minimum expectation. This is, as it stands, not effective governance of criminal justice in Wales.
I will turn now to probation. When Gwenno lost her train ticket home from HMP Styal, she missed her probation appointment back home in Wales. Therefore, she was in breach of her licence and was sent straight back to prison. Her experience again shows how the Probation Service has to operate in this “jagged edge”, where prisoners are at risk of being cut off from the support that they need to negotiate the difficult space between prison and rehabilitation.
It is no secret that the probation system is overstretched, and that is an accepted reason behind the higher rates of ex-offenders like Gwenno being recalled to prison and behind any risks not being taken when there are breaches in licence conditions. As the co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, I have heard directly from probation staff who warn that unless the service receives a significant funding uplift and a marked change in both working conditions and culture, the UK Government’s Sentencing Bill plans simply cannot succeed.
A major overhaul is necessary. However, in response to an amendment by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd calling for the devolution of probation—as recommended by his own commission’s report, by the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, and by the Commission on the UK’s Future, chaired by Gordon Brown—the Government Minister’s response was that the
“capacity for change in the Probation Service…is pretty much maxed out”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2025; Vol. 850, c. 1889.]
I am proud to say that that is not the view of many probation staff in Wales. For the Wales Probation Development Group, this juncture provides an opportunity for a 21st-century probation service that is locally managed, commissioned and delivered, with an emphasis on rehabilitation, desistance and the importance of relationships. To make that a reality, we need devolution. If change has to happen anyway, why not undertake real, lasting change that puts in practice what is actually being asked for in Wales and what could make a real difference to people like Gwenno in future?
I understand that the UK Government propose a memorandum of understanding to allow for some changes in Wales, but can the Minister tell me specifically what that would achieve in practice, because I understand from the House of Commons Library that a memorandum of understanding based on the Manchester model has “no legal force”? In the case of the Manchester agreement, either side would be free to withdraw from the MOU “at any time”, and it is not possible to raise a formal dispute or take legal action
“if either side believes the terms of the MOU have not been adhered to”.
Can she tell me how that will work for Wales, what the Welsh Government could actually do, and what would be in place to ensure that the UK Government keep to their side of any deal?
In reality, this is a way for the UK Government to essentially subcontract the meaningful community-based work, while refusing to give up the powers that set the agenda. That works for no one. If it did, why was it not the recommendation made by multiple independent commissions? I beg the Minister to answer that question. That is particularly important considering the way that the abolition of police and crime commissioners is being handled in Wales.
The Government say that Wales has a
“unique nature of devolved arrangements”,
but rather than addressing the fundamental incoherence of those arrangements and devolving criminal justice, the UK Government are instead expecting the Welsh Government to help work things out in Wales.
The delayed policing white paper is an opportunity for the UK Government to undertake meaningful reform to improve Welsh policing and the criminal justice system in Wales. To do that effectively, the Government must engage with the repeated recommendations of independent experts.
I come to my conclusion. Let us put ourselves in the position of Gwenno’s family. They have seen how offenders and ex-offenders in Wales, and their families, are failed by a resolute lack of joined-up thinking. It is through the full devolution of the criminal justice system that we can start to fix structural problems and address systematic issues in Wales that hinder both effective rehabilitation and the safety and welfare of victims, survivors and their families. This is not a political ask or a tick-box on a constitutional wish list; it is a pragmatic solution with the needs of people—victims and offenders within their communities—at its heart.
Gwenno Ephraim had been happy at school until the age of 16. She found the move to college difficult, and of course, after this there was covid—and there was a traumatic event in the family. Her mental health made her vulnerable. After offending, the only place where Gwenno found the safety of routine was in prison; she was in and out eight times between January and July this year. How is it possible for a young woman to be released from suicide watch in prison to chaotic bed-and-breakfast accommodation over and over again?
On 7 August, North Wales police put out a missing person appeal for Gwenno. It stated that she was
“last seen in…Bangor…on Monday night (28 July)…CCTV footage…appears to show Gwenno walking alone between 10.20 pm and 11.10 pm”,
by which time it is understood that she had reached the Menai suspension bridge. She has not been seen since.
The emergency services and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution made searches in the days immediately afterwards, but they found nothing. An inquest has not been opened because Gwenno is officially missing—that is her status. Because of that, Karen Ephraim is refused access to her daughter’s medical notes, as she has not got her daughter’s permission to access them. That is all logical, officially, but it makes no sense to a grieving mother looking for answers.
Will the Minister please meet Gwenno’s family, Karen Ephraim? It is better if the questions come from her mother than from her Member of Parliament. Let us remember that Gwenno was in the care of the state—in prison, in hospital and on licence. We failed her.