Part time prison sentences for women

[Hulababy]

Here


"A trial scheme under which women serve jail terms part time is being extended to the rest of the country.
The programme allows women to spend weekends or weekdays in prison, and the rest of the time working or with their families.

Home Secretary David Blunkett made the announcement at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on Wednesday.

The system has been tried at Morton Hall Women's Prison, Lincs, and Kirkham Prison, Lancs.

Deter re-offending


The aim of the scheme is to deter women from re-offending.

But the part-time sentences have come under criticism from the Howard League for Penal Reform, which described the idea as "ludicrous".

The league said there were better alternatives such as offenders apologising to their victims.

While in the community, the offenders will be under the supervision of probation officers, either working, looking for a job, or doing unpaid community work.

If behaviour is not up to scratch, they may be returned to jail full-time. "


Any thoughts?

[MTS]

if this is used only where a woman would have been sentenced to custody, then it may be helpful. what concerns me tho is that this type of sentence may be appealing to judges who wouldn't sentence to custody without this option - i.e. that women may end up in part-time custody, rather where they would have been sentenced to community service etc under the old system

[coppertop]

Won't there be complaints about equality if this is only available to women?

[NomDePlume]

I agree that there are equality issues with this. This may seem like a hard line but if they don't want to be separated from their families then they shouldn't offend !

I also agree with MTS to an extent.

[JoolsToo]

NDP - I agree with you!

[NomDePlume]

Offenders should think about the impact on their relationships with their kids, partners etc BEFORE the crime is committed. It's all very well complaining after the event.

Prepares to get flamed

[MeanBean]

They're not doing this for the sake of the offenders though, NdP, they're doing it for their children.

[NomDePlume]

I can see that MeanBean, but frankly, it's the parents responsibility.

[NomDePlume]

Of course the effect on kids with prent/s in custody should be minimised, but just not sure that this is the right way to go about it. It seems a little 'permissive' of the offender.

[MeanBean]

I agree, but there are times in life when you just have to swallow what seems wrong and go for "what works".

I don't like the idea of offenders being treated nicely and allowed conjugal rooms etc., like they are in Holland, or teenage offenders being taken off to foreign holidays to widen their horizons but tbh, if it reduces crime rates and recidivism, then I don't care if it irritates me at a gut level, I would rather it happens. (And all the evidence suggests that an emphasis on rehabilitiation and re-education rather than punishment, reduces offending.)

I totally understand how galling it is to see people looking as if they are being rewarded for offending, rather than punished, but if we as a society can get over that, I think we would have a better society - with lower crime.

[JoolsToo]

NDP - with you all the way ....

[NomDePlume]

Come and sit over here with me in the grumpy old c*w corner then, JoolsToo !

[Twinkie]

Ludicrous IMO - you don;t want to do the time don;t do the crime - I actually think they should make prison harder and more solitary - then they woul dhave to think about ther crimes - TBH some of the prisoners in nick today have less to worry abou tin terms of feeding/housing themsleves or adequate hospital care than some of the mums on here!!

DP worked out that you could do a really long stretch over 40 years and only have to do Friday Nights and Saturday Daytimes!!

[JoolsToo]

I just think people should take responsibility for their own actions and not rely on everyone else to clear up after them - there's no point bleating about what your children are going to do once you've been nicked!

Hopefully someone in the family will hold the reins for a bit - I feel sorry for the innocents but unfortunately thats life!

[zubb]

I'm pretty sure that this is available to men as well - saw an article on it a while back, will try to find it.

[codswallop]

I think this is a relaly good idea.
Unless oyu have dealt with ( in my case) young offenders you have no idea of the lifestyle that many seem to lead wheere crime is the norm and work is an exception.
theya re often a lso extremely poorly educates so where as we think as crime being a lifestyle you opt " in" to, its often very hard to opt out and show some initiative.

will beintersted if this afects me whe I satrt sitting.

[JoolsToo]

Twinkie - right on!

[littlemissbossy]

How can part-time sentences, for either men or women work as a deterent to stop re-offending?
That's like saying, well I'll go shopping-lifting for the day, if I get caught it's no problem because I'll just stay in prison during the week when the kids are school!!
Well (and I'll wait for the stampede to come!!!) what a load of bllcks!! The system is just too soft IMO.

[littlemissbossy]

are AT school sorry

[MeanBean]

More punitive systems have been tried, and where they are in place (eg: the USA, where prisons are renowned for not being "soft") the crime and re-offending rates are astronomical. Whereas in somewhere like Holland, where the prison regime is what people would call soft, re-offending and crime rates are lower.

If you want people to be punished, then leaving them to rot is fine. But don't complain if you then have high crime and re-offending rates. Where alternatives are tried and properly funded, they work. Which is better for everyone. I don't care if a robber gets punished; I would rather he didn't rob me in the first place. And that is what more creative alternatives to locking people away in prison achieve.

[codswallop]

ITS TRUE
it is ratehr tabloid approcah to say they should rot in jail

[littlemissbossy]

I never said that they should rot in jail
But they need to be educated that they should not offend in the first place

[Twinkie]

Goodness but you can't actually discipline children at home or at school these days and if they truant half of the women on here think locking their mothers up is not going to sort out the situation so how do we get the kids to school, get them to learn and get them to stay there and actually also get their parents to wrk with the teachers rather than against them?? (I am leaving my kids education at school to the teachers and expect them to follow the school rules whether I like them or not - this I think is a huge problem that some parents don;t like certain things at school and then backthe kids up and they lose respect for the teachers!!)

Somewhere along the line you have to get harsh with these offenders and they have tp realise that breaking the law will get them severly punished not shipped off for a day at Alton Towers!!

[MeanBean]

But how pointless is that if they then come out and re-offend? What would you rather? That they went inside and learnt how to be better criminals, or they went to Alton Towers as part of a re-habilitation programme and never re-offended again?

I don't want them to go to AT either, but I would rather that, than that they become career criminals. Which is what prison makes them.

[zubb]

But surely one of the ideas behind this is that the offendors (male or female) do not lose their house / job / family while at the same time they are punished by having their freedom curbed.
I would have thought that the likelihood of reoffending would happen when they are released to nothing. By combining these 'part-time' prisons with curfews / tagging it seems like a good idea to me.
It is only a trial at this stage and is being monitored. It is also not hugely different to the concept of open prisons where the prisoners have a job outside the prison, and surely only certain categories of crimes wll fit into this scheme.

[Hulababy]

The majority of offenders are taught about not re-offending again, and are ften put of compulsary education courses covering drugs, community issues, basic leterqcy/numeracy, childare, etc. Most of these courses are not te optional education courses that offenders can opt to do (behaviour permitting). And in prison, they are allocated jobs/work to do. They must attend this work, do their job and they get a nomina wage for their services. The emphasis is on getting these people back into the RW with education and skills that can enable them to life a crime-free life again.

But please be assured that those who do not care, those who continue to misbehave in prison, etc. - they do not get these so called privelges at all. True they ge two cold meals, and a hot meal a day and a bed at night - but when on "basic" the privelges are limited.