These Are Not Our Crimes

You’d have to try pretty hard though! Usually these rare cases involve months and months of bad decisions and ignored letters etc.

Prosecution for failing to pay a TV licence can result from one instance of allowing a TV licence inspector into your home or replying to one of their threatening letters. Prosecution for non-payment of the resultant fine can then occur as soon as a default is made on the fine. And if you can't afford to buy a TV licence, the chances of not being able to afford the fine are pretty high.

Ignoring letters only results in further letters being sent on a monthly basis. If you ignore the letters and don't let the inspectors in, further action seems unlikely (according to the author of this website).

www.bbctvlicence.com/index.htm

And nearly 200,000 prosecutions in one year is not 'rare'. It seems they have plenty of prosecutions to deal with from the people who self-incriminate and/or let the inspectors in, without following up on the people who ignore all the threats (who may or may not be watching broadcast TV anyway).

The Key Facts on the "Women in Prison" website (attached to my previous post) are based on research published by the Prison Reform Trust. In the cases of TV Licences, the original source is the 2015 Ministry of Justice Report "Women in the Criminal Justice System".

"It is important to note that while many women appear in Court following arrest and charge a great many more women are prosecuted for non-criminal offences. This includes TV licence evasion, welfare fraud, fare evasion and sanctions relating to the non-attendance of children at school. Because these cases are not dealt with by the police there is no option to use an out of court disposal.

• TV licence evasion accounted for 36% of all prosecutions for women, but only 6% for men. In 2015, 70% of all the 189,349 defendants prosecuted for this offence were women.13"

13. Ministry of Justice (November 2016), Women in the Criminal Justice System 2015

From "Why focus on reducing women’s imprisonment?"
Prison Reform Trust briefing February 2017
www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Women/whywomen.pdf

OldCrone is correct, of course. Imprisonment is due to failure to pay the fine set by the court as penalty for "TV Licence evasion".

After your case has been decided

If you’re found guilty, you’ll be sent a ‘notice of fine’ telling you how much you need to pay.

This may include:

• A maximum fine of up to £1,000 (up to £2,000 if you live in Guernsey)

• England and Wales: a victim surcharge of 10% of the fine or £30, whichever is greater

• In Northern Ireland an offender levy of £15.

• In the jurisdictions in which TV Licensing conduct the prosecution, prosecution costs of around £120 (if you plead not guilty this cost could be much higher)

• Compensation for a period of unlicensed use if it is requested.

You will also still have to buy a TV Licence, if you need one.

You can’t be sent to prison for a TV Licensing conviction, but you can be sent to prison for deliberately refusing to pay court fines.

www.tvlicensing.co.uk/visit

Seeing as the thread topic is crime in general, rather than the whys and wherefores of TV Licences, The Prison Reform Trust BROMLEY BRIEFINGS - PRISON FACTFILE is stuffed full of referenced facts and figures - the latest issue is Winter 2019:

www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Publications/Factfile

Download "Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile Winter 2019 (full version)"
www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Bromley%20Briefings/Winter%202019%20Factfile%20web.pdf

Women in Prison:

Key Facts
A round-up and latest key statistics regarding women affected by the criminal justice system.
(extract)
Women and sentencing

Most women entering prison to serve a sentence (80%) have committed a non-violent offence.
Theft offences accounted for 37% of all immediate custodial sentences given to women in the year leading up to September 2019.
Most women entering prison serve short sentences; prison sentences of less than 12 months accounted for 82% of all sentenced first receptions of women in the year leading up to September 2019.
Most of the rise in the female prison population can be explained by a significant increase in the severity of sentences. Between 2009 and 2013 the number of women sentenced for theft from a shop decreased by 4% whilst the number sentenced to custody increased by 17%.
In 2017 TV licence evasion accounted for 30% of all prosecutions for women, but only 4% for men. 72% of the 136,550 defendants prosecuted for TV license evasion in that year were women.

Women prisoner backgrounds

Seven in 10 women in prison reported that they had been a victim of domestic violence.
53% of women in prison report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse during childhood.
31% women in prison have spent time in local authority care as a child.
Women in custody are five times more likely to have a mental health concern than women in the general population. 67% of women in prison reported that they had a mental health problem. 25% of women in prison (compared to 4% of the general population) have symptoms indicative of psychosis. 49% of women in prison compared to 15% of the general population are identified as suffering from both anxiety and depression.
81% of women in prison were unemployed in the four weeks before custody. (continues)

www.womeninprison.org.uk/research/key-facts.php

Not really the point being made. Feel free to start a new thread in AIBU about whether saying people go to prison for not paying tv licences is reasonable, or a semantic error.

No, you can't got to prison for not having a TV licence, but you can go to prison for non payment of a fine imposed for not having a TV licence, which amounts to the same thing really.

You’d have to try pretty hard though! Usually these rare cases involve months and months of bad decisions and ignored letters etc. When I couldn’t afford a tv license I didn’t watch tv. It’s not a free service.

Did you actually read that article you linked to RabidChinchilla?

You cannot go to prison for not having a TV licence.

However, you could risk prosecution plus a fine of up to £1,000.

If you don’t pay, the court can take further action to collect the fine, including sending you to prison as a last resort.

No, you can't got to prison for not having a TV licence, but you can go to prison for non payment of a fine imposed for not having a TV licence, which amounts to the same thing really.

.. It seems to be the opinion on here that people are responsible for the crimes committed by other members of their sex...

You're funny.

They should not and we should not accept these men anywhere near them.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Thought I’d mention that as I’m usually disagreeing with posters on here.

My main frustration with the GC debate is that key concerns like this often get lost (and diluted) by all the moaning about what silly thing Caitlin Jenner’s said this week or petty Twitter infighting between different feminists. I think the avoidance of housing male sex offenders with vulnerable females is enough justification and all the petty slandering of almost anything trans related actually undermines more than bolsters the main argument.

Generally the offences that women are imprisoned for are low level, and if they had been committed by a man, would not always result in a prison sentence. Women in prison have a high rate of trauma in their histories. The sentences are often short. They should not and we should not accept these men anywhere near them.

the typical woman prisoner: a single mother criminalised and incarcerated for a petty offence such as failure to pay the TV Licence.

I’ve seen this example used on here before (not sure if it was by you) but apparently you can’t actually be imprisoned for failing to pay your tv license, so I’m a bit sceptical about the source.

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1218208/bbc-licence-fee-what-happens-if-you-dont-pay-tv-licence-fine-prison

Place marking to watch and share later.

Thanks.

RabidChinchilla - "It seems to be the opinion on here that people are responsible for the crimes committed by other members of their sex. So that's probably the issue. We would be responsible for these crimes if they were done by women."

It seems to be the aim of some people on here to distort and misrepresent legitimate concerns about such trivial matters as:

• truth

• facts

• honesty

• reliability of statistics

• * fairness

• * safety*

• - - - -

• fairness: eg. in sentencing perpetrators of "male pattern" crimes, women receive harsher sentences whilst transgender males (is such clarity allowed? Mumsnet mods please replace with "trans women" if that should cause offence) receive mitigated, even non-custodial sentences, due to judicial compassion for the trauma of "gender identity confusion"

* safety of some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society:*
ie. the typical woman prisoner: a single mother criminalised and incarcerated for a petty offence such as failure to pay the TV Licence.

why is it a problem that they add to the female crime statistics? I feel no more culpable for their actions than I do for those of Joanne Dennehy or indeed any white criminal, female or male.

It seems to be the opinion on here that people are responsible for the crimes committed by other members of their sex. So that's probably the issue. We would be responsible for these crimes if they were done by women.

Deeply shocking . Has anyone tried sending it their MP at all? Mine still hasn’t responded to my emails, saying he was looking into the matter...

Importantly, none of us are responsible for the crimes committed by another. But for the purposes of safeguarding, sentencing, commonsense etc, it is imperative to interpret and understand risk appropriately.

Hypothetically, there could be a repeat offender in another Western country, whose crimes are predominantly sexual in nature, or which victimise natal women. And this particular offender might be perceived to be receiving a veil of protection // "pass" from the criminal justice system, because individual judges (or equivalent) are unwilling to sentence this person to a female estate. I wonder what that would - hypothetically - do to such a justice system, through the viewing lens of the rest of the world? Or how it might affect women as a sex class in that country and beyond? Much less to the faith in their legislators of any female children of that country...

Bring back theUterati say I...

The program called "youtube-dl" may be useful. I've grabbed a copy of the video.

It obscures the nature & prevelance of male-pattern criminal behaviours.

It certainly does

It also obscures the nature & prevalence of female criminal behaviours, a subject I am especially interested in.

The other thing it does is it continues the cult-like tendencies for very obvious lies to be reported as facts, e.g. TWAW, there are countless different genders, children are born in the wrong body and should be prescribed puberty blockers, the Jack The Ripper Museum is a celebration of the history of women in the East End of London, herd immunity is the way forward, the PPE is on the way, the Emperor’s clothes are magnificent, etc etc.

More than anything else I am really sick of being expected to applaud and comply with liars liars with their pants on fires.

A bit of honesty goes a long way.

Does anyone have a screenshot of Mhairi Black's Twitter exchange giving examples of" female offenders" who were actually male?

Recording both sex & 'gender identity' would be very useful for everyone.
There is too much confusion caused by different uses of the term 'gender'

(Providing there is an option to include N/A or 'none' for the latter)

Dr Em's recent article examines the history and origins of the idea of 'gender identity'
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3896788-Important-series-of-articles-by-Dr-Em-Sexist-History-at-the-Heart-of-the-Science-on-Transsexualism-Part-I-Benjamin-Ihlenfeld-Money-Ehrhardt

They ought to list sex and ‘gender’ maybe. Interesting to compare crimes agains sex and include gender ‘ID’. That would be interesting.

It obscures the nature & prevelance of male-pattern criminal behaviours.

I understand the enormous issues with their being housed in women's prisons but why is it a problem that they add to the female crime statistics? I feel no more culpable for their actions than I do for those of Joanne Dennehy or indeed any white criminal, female or male.

It's not really about that, crime stats shouldn't be used that way anyway though goodness knows they are at times.

It comes down to the reasons we include sex in crime statistics at all - it helps us to understand patterns of crime and patterns of offending, it can help to develop policy, and we can look at changes.

If all of a sudden we found shoplifting charges against women doubled, for example, that would raise some questions. We also know that there are some significant differences in patterns of offending between men and women, and we'd miss things if we couldn't look at them separately.

I actually saw a twitter exchange a while back between Mhairi Black and someone else - a high profile GC feminist but I can't remember which one - where she was arguing for the position that women commit violent sexual crimes at the same rate as men. She shared a list of women convicted for sexual crimes to "prove" it, and literally the first 3 "women" on the list were men. It was such a perfect illustration of the problem but she didn't even acknowledge it. Literally using male sexual crimes against women to argue that women have the same offending profile as men and that men should therefore have greater access to us. So fucked up.

It might be informative to compare the number of female criminals committing sexual assault etc before the police started allowing prisoners to self identify, with the figures afterwards.

Is there a clear date from which the police started to do this, does it vary between forces and areas?