Should womens prisons be turned into mens prisons?

Part of the answer to prison overcrowding is releasing the many women who don’t need to be in prison. This would free up spaces for male prisoners. Inevitably that will mean some current women’s prisons will be unsustainable as they are. It is going to require some creative thinking regarding where to house those women who do need to be in prison. It may be a case of women’s wings rather than entire prisons.

There are only 12 women's prisons in England and none in Wales. Therefore, not that many spaces to free up. And they are so spaced out that many women are in custody some distance from home.

A lot of female prisoners are victims themselves, and that should be addressed, not necessarily in a prison setting. But provision for women should not be sacrificed for men.

I've heard it suggested that the very limited number of women convicted of violent crime could be housed in a limited number of small secure units. Or, I suppose, as someone suggested above there could be women's wings.

I believe that there are already some women in the men's estate (e.g - Joanna Denehy) if they are considered to be above a certain level of risk as the women's estate isn't set up to handle them. They are kept segregated from the men but part of that system. So maybe something like that would be the norm?

I absolutely support this, but I'm not sure it'll make much difference since only 4% of prisoners are in the women's estate.

The statistics around female prisoners are shocking and point to there being a need for much better for support for women at risk of offending and women offenders. https://www.womeninprison.org.uk/key-facts/

79% of women in prison have suffered previous domestic abuse with many of their offences being linked to the coercion they suffered in those relationships.

82% of women in prison experience mental health difficulties - far higher than men.

I strongly believe that, with a very few exceptions, women shouldn't be in prison. They should be on rehabilitation programmes, perhaps with some deprivation of liberty, but mostly community based. If it weren't for the crimes of men, there would be such small numbers of women in prison that it would make women's prisons obsolete.

We can't keep women in prison just because officers prefer to work with women!

Even Michael Gove suggested that up to 80% of the women in prison shouldn't be there. On the current figures of around 3500 female prisoners, we could then be looking at around 2800 being released. Just over half of the extra releases that are due to take place as part of the early release scheme.

Together with the other moves the government is suggesting - review of IPPs and faster removal of foreign nationals - this looks like a sensible solution.

Usual caveats about the prison system needing a complete overhaul apply.

Of those 12, half of the prison population is, I believe, concentrated within just 5 of them. This suggests the vast majority of female prisoners are very far from home. Smaller secure units within the male estate could provide facilities for women that are closer to families. The trick would be not to lose any specialist support for those prisoners.

Accommodation within prisons can and is set up to be away from others when necessary. HMP Peterborough accommodates both men and women.

Yes, that occurred to me too. Some areas of the country are a hell of a long way from a woman’s prison already. I looked for a map and found one which looked like it was on some sort of government report about women being locked up far from their kids.

If they are half empty yeah. But then they'd need to build a new smaller one for the women.

Unless they could split off a currently single sex prison into two separate units for each sex without too much change to physical infrastructure? And there was no chance of the opposite sexes being able to have contact.

Thinking more about this, there are currently 3500 approx women in prison. If we take Michael Howard's suggestion that 80% shouldn't be there, which is likely to be conservative, there are maybe 700 women who need to be in prison.

That is maybe enough for one actual prison which would obviously be non ideal as it would involve most of those women being far from home and family. So, you're looking at a different kind of set up entirely. You could absolutely close down the existing women's prisons or repurpose them for male prisoners etc.

I think I'd probably prefer small secure units - akin to secure children's homes which are set up for 20-30 people, with high staff/prisoner ratios, and a focus on intensive psychological therapy, education, drug rehab etc.

Just wait what they come up with. The conservative-green government in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is currently looking at introducing genuinely mixed prisons, with a view to using women to domesticate the male prisoners. The benefit to women would supposedly be the larger facilities that could offer them.more variegated programmes and/or training.

It's not just physical spaces for prisoners that's the issue. It's also staffing. So whilst it doesn't make a huge difference, giving non violent female offenders early release could free up some prison staff to work elsewhere. Even if you don't close any prisons down/convert them to make prisons a half empty prison requires less resources than a full one. Another reason to think about freeingnon violent female offenders is it changes the conversation from ONLY releasing non violent offenders when there's overcrowding. That's actually unfair on female prisoners since it usually leads to men being released earlier/serving shorter sentences for the same crimes because the overcrowding is in men's prisons.

I would be worried about closing women's prisons down since there are already issues with women being in prison very far from families which is crueler to children and families (harder to visit) and makes rehabilitation harder in some cases.

That sounds like a disaster! I definitely think that mixing with the opposite sex should only take place in very specific circumstances in prisons. People who are extremely low risk etc. if at all.

@BillieWiper absolutely. Tbf I don't think anyone plans to roll this out to violent offenders - but still.. Right now it's still at the very early stage where they had to change state prison laws in order to even make this legal.

Yes I agree. I also think we should bring back the death penalty for convicted murderers and rapists.

Fan of judicially murdering innocent people are you?

Apropos of nothing in particular:

'I absolutely support this, but I'm not sure it'll make much difference since only 4% of prisoners are in the women's estate.'

Kind of. There is an unused women's prison in Scotland right now. That could be housing men.

There are generally around 300 women in prison in Scotland at any one time, and 8,000 men.

But yes, I think it makes sense, OP. I am just scunnered at the moment that men committing all sorts of heinous shit are walking off with 'community service', while it seems the police crack down on investigating tweets, ffs.

Jesus fucking H Christ pissing on a bike.

Thankfully I don't think the UK is likely to go back to this. Not just morally, but practically speaking, it's a terrible idea.

The other problem is everyone thinks rape is the most terrible crime until it's someone they know or someone they sympathise with. Then, because it's human nature, many people will start to make excuses or rationalise it away. And that includes juries deciding the guilt of a lovely young well spoken man for example. It's already hard to secure a conviction, that's going to be a lot harder if juries or judges think the result of a guilty verdict will be death. Because even if it's proved beyond reasonable doubt if there's even a tiny sliver of doubt most people won't want to risk it. And because of how rape happens it's easy to introduce that sliver of doubt even in completely open and shut cases.

And that's before you consider that the rape victim themselves may know the rapist, even better related to the rapist. It's not uncommon for rape victims to have to work through feelings of guilt when reporting someone because they "don't want to ruin their lives". that's going to be much worse if it would end their lives.

So while I'm quite happy at the thought of rapists no longer living, I think the only consequence would be to take the conviction rate from very low to zero.

I would drastically reduce the number of prisoners full stop by releasing non violent offenders and using tags, curfews and community service instead.
This would probably mean most female prisoners being released anyway so yes I would be in favour generally of reducing the number of women’s prisons.
I would be careful of reducing women’s prison places meaning women (often mums) being held very far away from home though. Maybe turning some wings of women’s prisons over to house men would be better or vice versa (as long as they were completely separate with no mixing at all)