to ask if you think women should be imprisoned

[manicinsomniac]

NB - I'm not talking about murderers and child abusers etc, obviously those women pose a risk to society and need to be away from it.

But the majority?

I've started to get quite involved with prison volunteering, campaigning etc and have just read this on the women in prison website:

*Prison causes damage and disruption to the lives of vulnerable women, most of whom pose no risk to the public. Women have been and are marginalised within a criminal justice system designed by men for men.

Prison is often a very expensive way of making vulnerable women?s life situations much worse. Women are often incarcerated miles from their homes and families ? they lose their homes, their relationships with their children and their mental health in the process.

Better outcomes for women mean a reduced use of prison and an increased use of community alternatives. Prison does not work. The best way to cut women?s offending is to deal with its root causes. *

What do you think? Instinctively I agree with it but I don't know if I'm just being too idealistic and/or have just watched too many episodes of Bad Girls!

So WIBU to want to campaign against the imprisoning of vulnerable women? Or is it no different to imprisoning men?
Should I be equally bleeding heart about men?
Or do all these prisoners just deserve what's coming to them?!

Women being sent to prison isn't a recent thing. If you commit a crime you have to be prepared to face the consequences, and most people know that one of the possible consequences as incarceration.

Following what LookAtAllTheseFucksIGive said - it is BLOODY HARD to get yourself put into prison. The hugely overwhelming majority should have gone in sooner and for longer, men and women. A custodial sentence is generally a last resort after umpteen suspended sentences and community sentences and fines etc etc, so if anyone, man or woman, hasn't taken the hint and knocked crime on the head and they get themselves locked up then fuck 'em.

Dustinthewind - thanks but it's ok, I'm not feeling unsupported, I did ask and haven't fully decided what I think myself yet.

But I didn't realise there were more specific areas of the site for this stuff, I will have a look around. :)

I think traditionally, a lot of women prisoners had committed crimes at the behest of men (drug smuggling, soliciting etc). Perhaps you are thinking of those women and to some extent I agree with you.

But women who beat up other people in gangs? Nah. They deserve every minute of their sentence.

True Winkly. These girls weren't first time offenders.

There is a point that women tend to get harsher custodial sentences than men for the same/similar crimes. I'll try to pull out the data.

There is a double standard in sentencing. Not that this was the point that the OP was making, but still tangentially relevant (I hope).

it is BLOODY HARD to get yourself put into prison. The hugely overwhelming majority should have gone in sooner and for longer, men and women. A custodial sentence is generally a last resort after umpteen suspended sentences and community sentences and fines etc etc, so if anyone, man or woman, hasn't taken the hint and knocked crime on the head and they get themselves locked up then fuck 'em

That's absolutely true.

In fact, it's bloody hard to get arrested nowadays in a lot of areas...and even then if someone (male or female) was drunk at the time of arrest, they're normally let off scot free the next morning.

You only have to look at the Police documentaries that focus on drunken violence in town centres to see that.

Women are still imprisoned much earlier with the same previous convictions as men. For less serious offenses as well. There are many fewer womens prisons ( 12 at last time I knew) which means they will be much further away from family incl children) than for men.
V few women present a 'risk of serious harm' to the general public, but still get incarcerated. The treatment of women in the criminal justice system is appalling. It's a system designed to deal with men, and women's treatment needs to be ammended/differentiated to refelect that.
Interestingly, in the general population women tend to view female offenders much more harshly than men do. This is perhaps bourne out on this thread.

Women are still imprisoned much earlier with the same previous convictions as men. For less serious offenses as well

Does anyone have a link/evidence of this?

I don't think prison works effectively for anyone to be honest.

Yes there are certain people who should be locked up to protect themselves and others.

But as a punitive measure, it doesnt work, or the USA would be the safest society in the world wouldn't it?

I don't have a link for this, but I and others have known this for years. Additionally, the female custodial sentencing in the past 10 years has rocketed, up approx 40% since approx 2004 or so.
The prison spread is interesting. In the North-West there is one womens prison. HMP Styal. For men? Manchester, Forest Bank, Buckley Hall, Garth, Wymott, Risley,Liverpool, Kirkham, and the Young Offender Institute for young females is worse.
The experience of custody falls much more heavily on women/young women than on due to this simple fact

2.8 Women commit a different range of offences from men. They commit more acquisitive crime and have a lower involvement in serious violence, criminal damage and professional crime. A consistent picture over the last decade is that around 36% of women were sentenced for theft and handling offences. More women were sent to prison in 2004 for theft and handling stolen goods than any other crime. Research by Fawcett indicates that there are strong links between acquisitive crimes and women?s needs to provide for children. Worryingly there is evidence that the courts treat women differently from men. In the decade ending in 2002, 37% of all adult women given sentences had no previous convictions (but that is not to say that the first offences were not serious) ? more than double the rate for male offenders.

2.9 Between the years 1992 and 2000, there was a five-fold increase in the proportion of cases in which magistrates awarded women custody and nearly a two-fold increase at the Crown Court. Over the same period, the custody rate for men tripled at the Magistrates? Court and went up by half at Crown Court. One interpretation is that the greater use of custody is not being driven by an overall increase in the seriousness of women?s offending but by a more severe response to less serious offences. Home Office research published in 1997 found that sentencers appeared reluctant to fine women (and this remains the case) which sometimes resulted in women receiving more severe community penalties instead but, skipping a step up on the sentencing ladder in this way, carried the risk of an even more severe sentence in the event of a subsequent conviction.

That's from offence type and sentencing in the Corston Report on women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system, published by the Ministry of Justice.

Well what does "serious harm" mean exactly? There are very few crimes that hurt no-one but the person who committed it, and one of the reasons we have prisons is to protect the public from offenders. If someone has committed a pattern of offences over a period of time and they've been given chances like probation, rehab, electronic tagging, etc and they're still offending, then prison is the next step along that path that many would say they've chosen to take. If there were larger numbers of small low(er)-security prisons (perhaps 'twinned' with larger men's prisons) for women, maybe their needs would be better met while incarcerated.

Equality is a double edged sword, you have to take the rough with the smooth. If it is right that women are sentenced to prison more quickly and for longer periods of time than men for comparable crimes, then obviously that's not on.

I don't have a link for this, but I and others have known this for years

And yet there is no evidence?

I'm not surprised the female custodial sentencing has rocketed to be honest.

I live in a London Borough and the amount of female gangs/violence/drug dealing/robberies/street prostitution/muggings....has risen dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years IME.

If you do the crime, you need to realise you're going to do the time.

As always I feel far more sorry for the victims.

Forgot HMP Preston. That's quite a big one. And a further one in Merseyside, Altcourse.
Simple stats tho' don't reveal the different reasons as to why males and females offend, and what risk they present to the population.

I didn't say there was no evidence, worral. I said I don't have the links required, right now. But do feel free to take the time to check it for yourself.

Comeinto is there any up to date data?

Again it might be an 'area' thing but here where I live, there are lots of female gangs/violence/drug dealers etc....

And much more so in the last 10 or 15 years.

Perhaps they need more women's prisons to deal with the amount of crime?

WorraLiberty - I quoted evidence from a report published by the Ministry of Justice. Make of it what you will, but it is evidence.

What is 'vulnerable'?

worral - can you do a linky to the excessive rise in serious female offending in your borough? Or is it all in your experience?

Sorry loveday I meant there is no evidence from you to back up what you posted.

If I posted such a strong statement about 'what I and others have known for years' I would try to back it up...otherwise it's just hearsay IYKWIM

If women are thieves they should go to prison just like men do and in the same numbers. Why should women get away with it when men don't?

When you don't include men in your vulnerable equation then you're being as sexist as they come.

Using the figures below from 2009 and 2011, the UK prison population stands at around 97,000. As of October 4, 2011 the population of women in prison in the UK is 4,635.[2]

LINK

Looks like we are ALREADY getting off lightly compared to men ehh??

I agree that more should be made of how crime impacts on the victims of it worra, but a lot of people who end up in prison (and I'm not making excuses for them) are victims themselves, and sometimes their whole lives.

serious harm has a legal definition under the 2003 Crim Justice Act - it refers to acts which are life threatening, or are acts from which physical or psychological recovery would be difficult or impossible. Roughly. Barristers argue over this regularly.

I suppose I could Loveday but that would take a lot of Googling and it's almost 1am.

And what I posted was my experience of where I live.

You however posted facts such as "Additionally, the female custodial sentencing in the past 10 years has rocketed, up approx 40% since approx 2004 or so"

That's why I wondered if you could link to back that up.