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?!

'Or maybe I just have an old fashioned view of male prisoners as tough.'

I'm sure the realities of a brutilizing and frightening environment are very far from the portrayal of prisons as a soft option in the media.

Are you working on the premise that all women in prison are victims OP?

If you are would you suggest that everyone in prison is a victim?

Or at least a victim of their environments?

Well you can twist what I said any way you like Verbiage (stunning example I might add), but sexual abuse of children is not usually done by the family cat.

I am not calling women feeble-minded. I am saying that many vulnerable women are used by men. Not feeble minded women, but women who have grown up being treated like shit within their families and who then gravitate to relationships with men who also treat them like shit because they tend to be emotionally dependent on them, or financially dependent, from fear of being abandoned or fear of being beaten. Believe it or not, sexual abuse of children brings with it emotional and psychological complications.

It might be, verityverbiage, if that was what I was suggesting. But it isn't.

I'm suggesting that as a society which would like to see much less crime and far fewer victims, we should think about what really works in reducing crime and reoffending. Another statistic from the Bromley Briefing is that 2% of the general population has been in care but for the prison population it is 27%. It's surely worth considering, at least, whether creating a spiral in which women offenders go into prison for less serious offences and with fewer previous convictions than their male counterparts and their children go into care (and so become more likely themselves to commit offences and end up in prison) is the best way of going about it.

But I really don't want to be discussing this in AIBU at one in the morning.

I think we need vastly improved mental health facilities for both sexes. A female member of my extended family spent a few weeks in jail for repeated offending (shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, assaulting police officers) and was later diagnosed as bipolar. Both of her dc have been taken from her, and are being raised by her own mother. She has managed to stay out of trouble for a year or so, and has no apparent interest in getting her dc back. She is still only 20 years old.

Problem is you could say the exact same thing about male prisoners math, a lot if not most have had dodgy childhoods filled with violence/sexual abuse.

Well you can twist what I said any way you like Verbiage (stunning example I might add), but sexual abuse of children is not usually done by the family cat

So now you're saying that the majority of male prisoners are in prison for sex offences?

It just gets worse.

I'm not twisting anything,you're actually typing this stuff.

If a woman commits fraud she commits fraud and you blaming men for something they do is crass of you.

*It might be, verityverbiage, if that was what I was suggesting. But it isn't.

I'm suggesting that as a society which would like to see much less crime and far fewer victims*

I would completely agree with you on that.

Anything we do though has to have a sexless/genderless agenda for it to be equal and fair.

*Are you working on the premise that all women in prison are victims OP?

If you are would you suggest that everyone in prison is a victim?

Or at least a victim of their environments?*

Ummm, I don't know

Going by gut instinct - I think the majority or women in prisons are victims, yes. I'm sure not all but an awful lot. Therefore I guess I also think that a large proprotion of the prison population in general is a victim. But for some reason my sympathy and passion is still being drawn towards women and not men. Maybe that's ok, as long as I acknowledge that it is a bias? Everyone has specialist areas of interest after all!

I suppose I consider a prostitite more of a victim than a pimp. And an immigrant traffiking drugs as more of a victim than the dealer (who I guess could be of either sex). But I don't see a female murderer as more of a victime than a male murderer.

But for some reason my sympathy and passion is still being drawn towards women and not men

That's where you've lost many posters who would have agreed with your point.

really op you have a very peculiar view of women as somehow more deserving
and men by implication as less deserving
that's a v knee jerk and useless point of view it doesnt add anything of value but does throw quasi sentimentality into the ring. and its that poor wimmin sentimentality that clouds the issue

::Gets drawn back in again::

Verity - Yes, the response from the criminal justice system should be based on the nature of the offence, the impact on the victim, and the offender and their circumstances (a first-time offender might be treated differently to an habitual offender, for example). There shouldn't be a difference simply according to the gender of the offender, but what the published statistics highlight is that male and female offenders aren't currently being treated alike. Women are going to prison in circumstances where men are receiving non-custodial sentences.

It is also true that there are damaged and vulnerable men in prison.

Feeling more compassion for women in prison is OK verity.

The OP's already said she's been a victim of a serious and violent crime herself, she knows what it feels like to be a woman victim, that's the kind of people who should be helping to work out why women commit crime and what can be done to stop them repeating the behaviour, and how victims of crime can be more effectively supported.

The same kind of people with similar compassion for just men in prison are there too.

The same could be said for all kinds of things, why do some people choose animal charities over childrens charities? No, don't answer that, don't want to kick anything off

preferential compassion for one group is a subjective feeling,and as such subject to bias - not sure id say its ok

id say its tied up with ones own experiences,beliefs, and as ever these factors influence and shape subjective opinion

ComeIntoTheGardenMaud

I prefer to think of people in prison as people in prison and not divide them into sexes.

I always choose animal charities BTW :)

So long as the OP hasn't any influence over policy change SM, bias in where you decide to place your compassion is, like you say, just her subjective opinion.

Both men and women can be vulnerable, and both men and women with mental health problems are vastly over represented in the prison system. So I would say it's important to deal with the root causes for both sexes.

I think some people in prison are vulnerable and a product of their very unfortunate upbringings/environment.

I think some people are angry young men/women kicking out against a society/world they feel excluded from.

I think some people are selfish and inconsiderate and out for what they can get.

Some people are criminal masterminds who aren't afraid of a hard days work, they just do it outside of the law.

People = men and women. Women shouldn't be treated differently - they knew the risks to their families when they committed the crimes. Until recently men and women committed different types of crimes and that was addressed within the criminal justice system but that is changing now and we see more women convicted of violent crimes.

I think that the women themselves have a duty to think of the impact of their imprisonment to their children before the criminal justice system/rest of society does. Children can't be seen as a literal 'get out of jail free' card.

I personally feel that there are more effective solutions for some people and some crimes than prison, but that has to be balanced with society's current need to feel that someone has been punished for their crime.

Your volunteering is a great thing, but it's easy to start working in a field such as this and become overwhelmed by a desire to change the system. You won't be the first and you certainly won't be the last. I agree that once you have spent a little longer in the environment you will be less influenced by the passions of others and more intune with the reality of it.

Agreeing wholeheartedly with Folkgirl.

Blimey that was a bit epic

So based on your logic OP, neither then should women vote, be entitled to equal pay, maternity rights, or be allowed to enter certain professions, offer the sacrament or indeed become ordained.

Whispers quiet thanks to the suffragette movement.

tbh it gets a bit tedious to keep on reading "well they shouldn't have done it" if they have a family sort of stuff, or arguing that being well-thought out about sentencing in some way does a dis-service to victims.

I think the OP's OP is very broad-ranging and uses 'vulnerable', 'derserving', 'bleeding heart' in a way which invites the debate to be v. 'subjective' rather than looking at how the system operates currently.

For both genders, well-targetted community disposals have better 'outcomes' (i.e. rates of re-offending within 2 years) than imprisonment. We have a massive problem with putting people in prison - they may be 80-90,000 in there but the average stay is measured in a few shorts week, so there is no 'rehabilitative effect' but only massive fracturing of people's prospects and circumstances.

marriedinwhite - that is an absurd way of looking at the OP. And a bit dim if I may say.

Yes I do, and I work within the criminal justice system.
I believe prison does no-one any good at the moment, due to the crappy nature of our prison system, but in many cases there is no safe alternative or appropriate alternative to a custodial sentence.

Prisons need better skilled, trained, (and therefore better paid) workers. Short sentences for men or women are a nonsense - people lose their jobs, homes and benefits, yet are not inside long enough to take advantage of any of the courses/therapy available, which just seems bonkers. I work exclusive with men at the moment, and lots of those i see are the vulnerable victims of society in the same way female prisoners can be. and the vulnerable, abused, mentally ill prisoners are just in for non-violent offences.