Do we send too many women to prison?

your posts are littered with hyperbole and little digs
i dont have to see anything your way, nor do we have to concur
and no i need dont have a gender issue about it. i have a issue with how we treat disaffected,poor and marginalised individuals in society.not just wimmin

yes, prisons are full of people who have had shit lives but it is wilful blindness to refuse to see that there are distinct differences in the population of male prisoners and the population of female prisoners. Equality does not mean insisting that everyone is the same - we don't offer women prostate screening and we don't offer men cervical smears. You have to recognise gender issues just as much as race issues or disability issues, or age, or sexual orientation...

Could you repost in the English language SM?

is that a what about the menz dig?no one is being misogynist.is this a oi yiuse is anti feminist putdown
i dont feel specificity more disgruntled at the female criminal justice experience,than the male experience
systemically society fails the poor,those with poor social history,and poor educational outcomes. my immediate response to that isnt what about da menz, nor is it oh my god poor women gotten at by society and criminal justice

I just love the way misogynists have now perverted the language of equality so any attempt to look at potential gender discrimination is met with immediate howls of 'you aren't being fair to men!'.

Jeez. Doesn't take long for reactionary forces to absorb and pervert attempts to fight discrimination, did it? These days you can't even ask whether there are gender issues before you get multiple posts from people claiming merely posing the question is unfair to men.

Newsflash - in general, men are still hugely advantaged and women are still hugely disadvantaged on any measure you want to look at. Asking whether the criminal justice system is uniquely exempt from this phenomenon is hardly eccentric.

I do wonder whether the people who are so quick to deny that the possibility of sexism even exists in the context of criminal justice are equally vociferous in denying racism exists.

there are embedded social and psychological expectation and construct of women
digression and deviance from social norm is harshly judged
bit i dont think the female criminal justice experience is more deserving than that of a vulnerable male

I think women are automatically more harshly judged as us women just should not have criminal tendencies as we are luffly and love fluffy kittens and all that. I would hasten to bet that Maxine Carr - who killed no-one - is more reviled in the press than Ian Huntley.

I think we are better off concentrating on what crimes women commit and why they commit them. And comparing them to what crimes men commit etc.

the poor wimmin, bad lasses lead astray by penis owners that clichéd appraisal doesnt help
both genders can have propensity for crime and deviancy.but in women criminality is considered more shocking
the accelerators into crime are poor literacy rate,poverty,abuse,dysfunctional childhood for both genders

*Rather than separating a family and creating larger issues for society by taking children away.. I should elaborate.

Don't think it should be a gender issue, However maybe it should be a resident parent issue (which is gender biased towards women though I know). If someone is a decent parent and has been conviceted on a non violent crime.. maybe a slight amount of leeway?

Of course we're sending too many women to prison.

We are sending them there for crimes which when men commit them, don't usually get a custodial sentence.

This bollocks that people are spouting about how a vagina shouldn't be a get out of jail free card - well hey, a penis appears to be.

I have to say - I do not believe in going to prison for non-payment of fines. There must be a more suitable community based punishment. If the fine was for a violent or anti-social crime, then a short custodial sentence would have been more applicable in the first place.

Yes, I have read Eve Was Framed too. The Criminal Justice system was set up and is mostly staffed with middle class men.

profound, dude

don't do the crime if you can't do the time!

I am very interested to know what proportion of crime is drug related. As I think our laws on drugs and tobacco and alcohol are all mixed up and need a radical overhaul.

God, I remember 'Eve Was Framed'. Changed my outlook, way back when.

I would never apportion greater sympathy on gender basis,a troubled life is no good
not for society,not for the individual,not financially. I favor rehab for suitable candidates
a small minority prisoners are deviant,dysfunctional and role prison is to remove their liberty and punitive sanction

There's a really good book on the issue called "Eve was Framed" by Helena Kennedy QC, which is a very good overview of all the issues.

I would argue that yes, we do send too many women to prison and there are better option out there.

My opinions are the same for male prisoners too, but the point is surely that by imprisoning women, there is more likely to be a disproportionate effect on children, and cycles of disadvantage are made worse. It's completely valid to bring gender into the argument because some women are more vulnerable or disadvantaged because of their gender or because they have children.

I think it's a disgrace that we punish the most vulnerable people in our society instead of helping them. Many people have miserable lives and little opportunity to improve them. Many women, and many mothers, are in a cycle of disadvantage which is too difficult to break. Helping these women instead of punishing them would benefit them, their families and society as a whole. Money spent on prisons should instead be spent on preventing offending in the first place, and rehabilitation.

IMO it is the level of crime that is relevant to the sentance not the sex of the criminal.

[http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/prisons-and-probation/prison-population-figures Current figures for the week of the 23rd] :
Men: 81,984
Woman: 4,174
Total: 86,158
Operational Capacity for England and Wales: 90,995

Don't want to read and run (but have to), but haven't the time write now to go into the points I want to make, but there's a breakdown if anyone was interested.

"*In the 12 months to June 2011 80% of women entering custody under sentence had committed a non-violent offence, compared with 70% of men."

This is meaningless unless you know what proportion of men/women committed violent crimes, what proportion of men/women committed non-violent crimes and what the custody rates were for each, proportionally. All this tells you is that more male prisoners committed violent crimes than women.

"*28% of women in prison had no previous convictions ? more than double the figure for men (13%).

I want to know why the incarceration rates for women with no previous convictions is so much higher for women then men. It seems to me that women are still judged more harshly then men. "

Again, meaningless, unless you can see stats for how many men/women out of prison have no previous convictions. It may be that men in general have more convictions than women. Also, it only carries meaning if the same crime is being punished by prison for women vs community service for men.