Don't release violent male offenders, repurpose women's prisons for them instead

I don't think any non-violent offenders should be in prison, it causes more problems than it solves.

Fines, community service, mental health treatment, house arrest etc

I wonder how the long-term economics would work out?:
The cost of repurposing a number of women's prisons, versus the cost - to the police, the NHS, the courts etc and the general public - of having the relevant number of violent and predatory criminals on the loose instead.
I don't know. Does anyone?

No you haven't answered my question. Forget sex for a minute, prisoner A failed to pay court fines, in prison for six months. Due to overcrowding released after two months. Prisoner B failed to pay court fines and in prison for six months. Overcrowding but not released early as they are a B. That doesn't seem fair does it

Now think A is male and B is female and now is it fair that A gets released early because he's male. That doesnt seem fair.

Now reverse the sexes and A gets released early because she's female but B isn't. You say that's fair. Why?

.

What kind of question is that?

Do you also think dangerous women should be in prison?

If prisons are so crowded that the government is seeking early release for rapists and murderers, the priority should be to give early release to all nonviolent criminals first. Most women in prison are there for nonviolent crime.

Makes perfect sense to me

vert, very few women belong in prison. Literally the tiny handful who commit murder. Absolutely no others

Why shouldn't women be in prison? We fought for equality so if a woman commits the same crime as a man she should do the same time.

Actually NOONE (male or female) is imprisoned for non payment of council tax. It’s a civil debt, not a criminal one and therefore cannot be addressed for this reason. In theory a magistrate CAN sentence someone to 3m for wilful non-payment, but clearly they never do.

Apparently only 0-2 people per year end up in prison as a result of nonpayment of TV licence fines (Ministry of Justice data).

So all of this is a bit of a distraction to the core discussion.

70% of women have sentences of less than 12m; over 50% for less than 6m indicating that these are relatively minor offences (shop lifting, petty theft) and better addressed with ankle tags and community service. Men should not be in the estate for those same level of crimes, either, imho opinion and could equally be ankle tagged, given community service, or supported in returning to work/job training.

Prison should be about a) the containment and rehabilitation of serious offenders and b) about removing from society those who presents a longer-term and continued danger to it. Life sentences for murder/multiple murder/gang rape and organised crime… should mean life.

TheignT seems to be very strongly invested in there being no differences at all between the typical behaviour of males and females.
To the point of trying quite hard to misread and misinterpret every comment. Why so touchy about this?

Makes perfect sense to me

vert, very few women belong in prison. Literally the tiny handful who commit murder. Absolutely no others

I think we really need to be clear and use actual data, not just received wisdom here. This is a very serious matter, both for public safety and for women in the criminal justice system.

1 - The idea that roughly 2,500 women in prison are there for non-violent offences is not supported by the current Ministry of Justice figures. On 31 March 2026 there were 3,461 women in prison, including 848 on remand. Of the 2,593 women serving immediate custodial sentences, 1,063 were sentenced for violence against the person, 144 for sexual offences and 217 for robbery: 1,424 women, or 54.9%, across those three categories alone. The official tables do not provide a simple violent/non-violent total, so subtracting the “violence against the person” category from the whole female population is not valid.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2025
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69f0c7400bb62e692c5d6dae/prison-population-31-Mar-2026.ods

2 - Women are not routinely in prison merely because they could not pay council tax or a TV-licence fine. The Government says nobody has been imprisoned for council-tax non-payment as their main offence since 2018; committal is possible only after a finding of wilful refusal or culpable neglect, not simple inability to pay. On 31 March 2026 there were just two female fine defaulters in prison for all kinds of fines combined. For TV licensing, there were zero people in prison for failure to pay the fine on 30 June 2020; 91 custodial sentences in 2015–18 arose from failure to pay a court-imposed fine, not from licence evasion itself.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65ba708df51b1000136a7e4a/CouncilTax_collection-_government_response.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-publishes-response-to-decriminalising-tv-licence-evasion

3 - It is also incorrect that most women in prison are serving sentences of under 12 months for fraud and petty theft. There were 349 sentenced women serving less than 12 months: 10.1% of all women in custody and 13.4% of sentenced women. In the immediate-custody offence table there were 404 women sentenced for theft and 63 for fraud, compared with 1,063 for violence against the person. Source: the same MoJ prison-population publication and spreadsheet above.

4 - It is plainly wrong that only the “tiny handful” of women who commit murder belong in prison, or that women in custody are almost all harmless petty offenders. The current figures include 1,063 women sentenced for violence against the person, 144 for sexual offences and 217 for robbery, as well as serious non-violent offences whose victims may still suffer grave harm.

5 - Murderers are not being released early under these schemes. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence; release can occur only after the minimum term and a Parole Board risk decision, while some offenders receive whole-life orders. The Sentencing Act 2026 also excludes life sentences, IPP sentences and extended determinate sentences from earlier release. The “killer” example reported in the Telegraph involved manslaughter, not murder.

https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/about-sentencing/types-of-sentence/life-sentences/
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2026/2/notes/division/7/index.htm

6 - Early release has not been restricted to men. In October–December 2025, SDS40 produced 10,164 releases from male establishments and 1,013 from female establishments. The 2026 progression model is based on sentence type, offence and behaviour, not sex.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69f1d916c42061e837e3ac16/Standard_Determinate_Sentences__SDS40release_data__England_and_Wales.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sentencing-bill-2025/sentencing-bill-progression-measures-factsheet

7 - “Women reoffend less” needs an important qualification. Across all offenders in the January–March 2024 cohort, the female proven-reoffending rate was lower: 24.7%, versus 29.7% for men. But among people released from prison in the April 2023–March 2024 data tool, 1,752 of 3,491 women reoffended (50.2%). Combining comparable male category A–D/local prison groups gives 18,253 of 44,297 (41.2%). Women in that prison-release cohort also recorded more reoffences per reoffender, 8.54 versus 6.74. These are unadjusted figures and do not prove that sex causes the difference, but they directly contradict the blanket claim about female prisoners.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/proven-reoffending-statistics-january-to-march-2024/proven-reoffending-statistics-january-to-march-2024
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6978dace316fd8f801552068/PRSQ_adult_releasing_prison_data_tool_apr23_mar24.xlsx

8 - Women do not simply receive “the same time” as men in practice. In the official 2023 comparison, women convicted of indictable offences were 28% less likely than men to receive immediate custody. For theft the figures were 20% for women and 37% for men; for violence against the person, 15% and 41%. Average custodial sentence length was 12.2 months for women and 21.8 for men, although the MoJ cautions that the different offence mix explains part of that gap.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023-html

9 - It is too sweeping to say women’s prisons are not secure or reinforced. The women’s estate includes both open and closed prisons. Bronzefield is a purpose-built closed prison holding restricted-status/high-risk women. It is fair to say there is no women’s prison built to the same high-security specification as the male high-security estate, so conversion could require additional work; that is not evidence that conversion would necessarily be “prohibitively expensive”.

https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/05/Restricted-status-thematic-web-2023.pdf
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/Bronzefield-Web-2018-1.pdf

10. Repurposing one women’s prison would not create 3,500 places. Approximately 3,500 is the entire female prison population. Bronzefield, for example, held 483 women on 31 March 2026. Nor does the Telegraph proposal itself establish the cost or feasibility: the article reports a campaign proposal to repurpose at least one prison, not an implemented, costed government plan. The latest overall annual cost per prisoner was £56,618, but that does not tell us what converting a particular establishment would cost. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/25/repurpose-womens-prisons-men-government-urged-tories-uk/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69bbeea2f7b1c24d8e23ce44/costs-per-place-costs-per-prisoner-2024-2025-summary.pdf

but for the record, I don't think anyone should be in prison for not paying their council tax.

no-one's said that women aren't violent and men are. However as a class men are much, much more violent than women.

And Fred/Rose West - no, actually, I really can't be arsed. Something about pigeons shitting everywhere.

I don't know if anyone goes to prison for not paying council tax, I was using something that men and women could both do and you couldn't start banging on about violence.

Patronising much?

@TheignT yes I did, see attached.

And your new post puts words in my mouth I have not said, and uses a new scenario you have just come up with.

Either you don't just don't understand what I'm saying, or you're wilfully misreading my posts and are on the wind up. Either way, I'm getting fed up of going back and forth with you on this.

I've never not agreed with that simple position, it should apply to both sexes, obviously.

@TheignT yes I did, see attached.

And your new post puts words in my mouth I have not said, and uses a new scenario you have just come up with.

Either you don't just don't understand what I'm saying, or you're wilfully misreading my posts and are on the wind up. Either way, I'm getting fed up of going back and forth with you on this.

but for the record, I don't think anyone should be in prison for not paying their council tax.

no-one's said that women aren't violent and men are. However as a class men are much, much more violent than women.

And Fred/Rose West - no, actually, I really can't be arsed. Something about pigeons shitting everywhere.