Jean Corston, Baroness Corston

Jean Ann Corston, Baroness Corston, PC (born 5 May 1942) is a British Labour politician.

Early life

Jean Ann Parkin went to Yeovil Girls' High School (now the Westfield Community School) on Stiby Road in Yeovil and the Somerset College of Arts and Technology. She worked at the Inland Revenue. At the London School of Economics, she gained an LLB in 1989. From 1989–90, she studied at the Inns of Court School of Law. She also studied with the Open University. She became a barrister.

Parliamentary career

Corston was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol East from April 1992 to 2005. Until stepping down at the 2005 general election, she was chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the first woman ever to hold that position.

On 13 May 2005 it was announced that she would be created a life peer, and on 29 June 2005 she was created Baroness Corston, of St George in the County and City of Bristol.

She was commissioned by the Home Office, to conduct a report into vulnerable women in the criminal justice system of the United Kingdom, published in March 2007. The report outlines "the need for a distinct radically different, visibly-led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach". The report is known as the Corston Report and has largely informed government policy on the matter. Progress and improvements by local probation services, the National Probation Service, Her Majesty's Prison service and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) are regularly compared to the recommendations in this report.