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?!

People who have sole care of children shouldn't be doing stuff that's likely to get them sent to prison - surely that's the solution

Really - can't you work up more of a dander for the victims ??

We need less womens prisons and far more community sentences which will effectively intervene with them regarding the sources as to why they offended in the first place.

If the %'s are up 40% wht is the womens prison population still 4,635 and the mens population 95,000 ?

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

I agree ZigZag but those victims are both male and female.

Crime is crime is crime....and given that far too many criminals get away with far too much, I don't agree anyone be they male or female should get away without a custodial sentence just because they live a long way from a prison or because they have children.

No matter what sex they are.

For the men too loveday?

Chipping - if your post is directed at me, possibly, I do engage regulalry from the victim's perspective. Nonetheless that doesn't remove the discrimination present in the current application of the justice system.

What you class as discrimination against women looks like disdcrimination for women Lovedaypan.

How do you explain the massive disparity between female and male prisoners and how are you fighting to rectify that?

Indeed Lilac - the reoffending rates for community sentences is lower that short-term imprisonment for both genders. But as a country we ignore evidence and have a sort of collective emotional attraction t olocking people up, unfortunatley.

I think that people should be imprisoned if they pose a threat to others in society, and if they do not, then prison should not be used and other solutions should be found.

It's a half formed theory though admittedly.

We need less womens prisons and far more community sentences which will effectively intervene with them regarding the sources as to why they offended in the first place

On the contrary I think we need more women's prisons and then the problem of being imprisoned too far away from the criminal's family won't be an issue.

If someone (for example) kicked the shit out of my child and stole their money and mobile phone (having committed numerous other offences) the only thing I'd want to know was what the hell they were doing out of prison in the first place.

All offenders have representation and an army of people with 'case reports' detailing their lives/upbringing/income/addictions etc....for the judge to read before he or she decides to pass sentence.

Loveday, totally agree that the prison system set-up to deal with men, mainly because criminality is the preserve of young men. In fact the whole service is on it's knees due to increasing numbers, think we've smashed the 74k limit which was the maximum when I was working for them around 6 years ago. Interesting study by ONS on mental health in the population, where they did a booster sample on prisoners found that, unsurprisingly, prisoners had a higher incidence of diagnosable mental illnesses than the general population, but the highest group were female prisoners (from memory, so willing to be called-out) with 80 per cent being mentally ill. Add to this, again from memory, that a large proportion of female prisoners are there because of drug-trafficking/illegal immigrancy (both linked to trying to create better lives for their kids, or under pressure from men), and that many are drug-addicts mainly due to being introduced to drugs by significant male partners (again i think well documented) and there is a gender debate to be had. That said, I have also worked on victim support and the behaviour of some women towards other women makes me want to weep.

And the excuses begin.

there should be a seperation of justice and rehabilitation - it shouls just be so.

i think sentences should reflect both.

if man or woman did harm to my family - i would want that person to be punished

yes i would

i really would

there should then be a rehibilitation porograme back into society

you cant lock people up

set them free and expect it to be all good

thats just nuts

but the victim should have a voice in this argument too

and men can be vulnerable too remember

they can have shit lives
they can be sexually abused
they can be forced to do things they dont want to do
they can have mental health problems

i think seperating the sexes for punishement and crime is of ddetriment to the feminist cause

i am not a feminist i would like tomake that clear,

I don't know exactly what you mean there, verity. Men offend much more than women. But the impact on women's imprisonment falls much more heavily.
1am. bed time.

Basically, prison doesn't work.

Applauds CustardoCuddlyCunt that's on the money 100%

I don't know exactly what you mean there, verity. Men offend much more than women. But the impact on women's imprisonment falls much more heavily

How?

Men offend much more than women

They commit different crimes that's what they do.

Of course i've got a point but you're refusing to acknowledge it.

Shoplifting happens every day in the UK and that is thieving and it's a womans crime is it not?

Women ARE violent i've seen them in town centres we're not that gentle a sex.

28% of women in prison had no previous convictions ? more than double the figure for men (13%). [Source: Table A1.26, Ministry of Justice (2011) Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2010, London: Ministry of Justice]

13% of women serving sentences of under 12 months had no previous convictions, compared with only 8% of men. [Source: Table A1.27, Ibid.]

Most of the rise in the female prison population can be explained by a significant increase in the severity of sentences. In 1996, 10% of women convicted of an indictable offence were sent to prison, in 2010 14% were. [Source: Table A5.19, Ministry of Justice (2011) Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly Update to December 2010, London: Ministry of Justice and Table 1.8, Ministry of Justice (2007) Sentencing Statistics 2006, London: Ministry of Justice]

This comes from pages 31-32 the Bromley Briefings published by the Prison Reform Trust in December last year. There are a lot more statistics there, too.

Worra - It may be that offending has women has increased, but the question being posed by the OP (as I read it) is whether prison is the most appropriate response to that. There's another statistic I can't immediately find abut the (high) proportion of women offenders whose children have to be taken into care while they are in prison - that happens far less often when men go to prison as their children usually remain in the care of the mother. That on its own makes the question worth asking, in my view.

So in other words if you've got children you shouldn't go to prison?

Nonsense.

I agree with you, OP. The very slim benefits to society of incarcerating non-violent offenders are more than offset by the suffering endured by the families of the women, and especially their children. I used to volunteer in a club for children with at least one parent in prison. The children whose mothers were locked up seemed to be in far worse shape than those with a father in the slammer. They tended to be passed around from one relative to another, changed school a lot; they were very 'lost'. Society ends up paying for the incarceration and then it pays to pick up the pieces when the impact on the children begins to be felt.

A friend in the US was a doctor in a county jail. She wasn't in medicine for the money. Most of her patients had mh problems, most had been sexually abused as children, most had dropped out of school barely able to read, many were involved in abusive relationships, most had absolutely no hope of ever getting a job upon release, most were very young mothers, many were pregnant in prison, many were repeat offenders. Nothing was done to provide any in-depth help with their problems. It would have been far more cost effective to address their problems than to treat them purely as 'criminals', for both their sake and for the sake of their children.

It is also true that many women in prison for non-violent crimes (cheque fraud, etc.) are there because they were involved with men who put them up to it.

The majority of the prison population have mental health disorders, lets let them all roam free why stop with women such a great idea.

More than 70% of the prison population has two or more mental health disorders. (Social Exclusion Unit, 2004, quoting Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners In England And Wales, 1998)

Really - can't you work up more of a dander for the victims ??

Of course I can. But the majority of society has sympathy for the victims and there is lots of help available.

It's impossible to divide people into clear cut groups of criminals and victims anyway. Lots of criminals have spent a lifetime being a victim. Some victims will become or already be criminals.

I would just be reluctant to villify (for example) an 18/19 year old kid who has been sexually abused for as long as she can remember and given no stable home life or positive role models if that kid then turns to drugs, prostitution or theft etc. I know that's not all prisoners but it's not an isolated few either.

I was pregnant at 19. I was raped and subsequently pregnant again at 23. I'm a single parent of 2. I have mental health diagnoses. I have used drugs regularly in the past. But I had a stable childhood, loving family and friends, a good education and the chance to get the qualifications for a decent career. The way I see it there's only chance and good fortune that makes the difference between me and an imprisoned drug addict. I'm not going to judge someone because they haven't been given or found a way out of the shit they've been through.

I do take the point that the male prisoners are also vulnerable. Maybe it's the kids thing I can't get past or the rape/abuse statistics. Or maybe I just have an old fashioned view of male prisoners as tough. I don't know what it is. Looks like it's probably unreasonable though.

It's all the mens fault then is it mathanxiety ?

It is also true that many women in prison for non-violent crimes (cheque fraud, etc.) are there because they were involved with men who put them up to it

Absolutely stunning example of pointing a finger at a woman and calling her feeble minded.

Your whole premise is flawed.dont assess or generalise about gender

i dont differentiate on gender nor would i classify a woman as more deserving or needy than a vulnerable male incarcarated

if you globally believe that prison is not a fitting or appropriate punishment to certain vulnerable individuals then you have to assess individually by presentation and need.not by gender

providing adequate rehabilitation as an alternative to incarceration isnt a gender issue. its a criminal justice,and psychiatric and social issue

Its not bleeding heart to think the hard unpopular stuff,but it is wrong to prioritise needs on a gender basis