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 treatment and incarceration.
Not just locking them up. The stats on self-harming and suicide attempt amongst female inmates is horrifying. Also amongst young offenders I think there is a real problem with that.

SQ, excellent points. The hang em high nonsense spouted here is appalling.

The US does have the highest prison population in the world. Incarceration is a predictable part of life for African American men, and women. In 2003, about 10% of the total black male population aged 25 to 29 was in prison. Crime rates over the last 30 years in the US have gone down but law enforcement focus on poor black communities due to the so called war on drugs has increased exponentially, with no sign whatsoever of ever reaching a conclusion. 4 out of 5 young black teens and men in certain areas will at some point have a brush with the 'system'. There comes a point when incarceration ceases to be a deterrent.

If a black woman of childbearing age committed a crime against me in the US I would never report it. I could not live with myself afterwards if I thought this would be her fate. 46 states shackle pregnant women and women giving birth and women breastfeeding and women holding their babies in prison nurseries. This practice is not limited to women in prison for violent crimes -- these are women who for the most part may have shoplifted or written bad cheques, not women who murdered or raped or beat their victims.

do the crime, do the time. The law is too lenient as it is.

A very thoughtful and informative post.
And one that is less so

MN is a barometer of public opinion, though.

Well I'm public and I certainly have an opinion or two.

Yup, me too.

I have looked for stats on this, I can find what women are put in prison for and the same for men, I can find alsorts of other stats about prison, but not sentence descrepences (sp) based on gender.

Has anyone found any stats?

I am genuinely interested in this

Yes, I found lots of stats in the Corston Report and the Bromley briefing (see my earlier posts). They mention (for example) that women are more likely than men to be imprisoned on first conviction. If the other stats you're looking for aren't in there I guess they will be in the Ministry of Justice reports that they reference.

Lots more stats in the thematic review of women in prison published by HM Inspectorate of Prisons in 2005.

Thanks, I will look through them.

That link is very informative maud
The bit about children made me feel really sad
It is a fact that large numbers of women who go to prison have young children and that the biological father / partner does usually not look after them so they go into care. Some women in that report did not know who was looking after their children or where. In comparison, in 90% of cases where men with children go to prison the children are looked after by their mothers. It does need thinking about.

This

"UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child Implementation Handbook (2002) states:
Article: Parents in prisons

The imprisonment of parents, particularly of mothers of dependant young children, is deeply
problematic, because the child is being punished along with the parent. While it is argued that
the punishment of offenders always has repercussions on innocent relatives, where young
children are concerned the effects can be particularly catastrophic to the children and costly to
the State (both immediately, in terms of providing for the children's care, and long term, in
terms of the social problems arising from early separation)."

I agree, SardineQueen. And, as I've said before, my concern isn't just about the welfare of the children - although that's a perfectly respectable and reasonable concern, especially on a parenting website - it's about setting up the perfect storm of factors that increase the odds of those children too becoming offenders in their turn.

Should also have said that there is no shortage of published material on any of this. Anyone wanting more 'evidence' needs only to get googling.

Imprisoning someone for a relatively low level crime is usually a last resort after other avenues such as Community Service and suspended sentences have been exhausted as a punishment. Many convicted people (men and women alike) have had a very sad and dysfunctional life but, that doesn't excuse their behaviour - after all, many people who have also had a very sad and dysfunctional life do not go on to commit crime. What message would we be sending out to victims of crime if we stopped using prison as an option - punishment is as much the purpose of sentencing as rehabilitation. And as others have pointed out, shouldn't these women think about the effect on their family before they commit crime? There is no logic at all for making exceptions for vulnerable women vs vulnerable men

For a start, the large numbers of people with addiction and mental health issues could be treated rather than simply locked up.

I know it's a revolutionary idea and will therefore never happen

Interesting how so many people are coming to the threads assuming that men and women receive comparable punishments for the same crimes.

Sazzlesb -- As a person who was a victim of a mugging once, I have no doubt that imprisoning the person who mugged me served absolutely no useful purpose unless the prison provided the opportunity for the mugger to overcome addictions and to get some sort of educational qualification. The criminal in my case was a young man in his early 20s who reeked of alcohol at 4.30 in the afternoon, not well-spoken, and I am pretty sure he never got a job offer ever again once he came out. He had a low paying part-time job in a hotel kitchen when he mugged me. He lost that job, I am sure.

They used to have debtors' prisons, and their usefulness was eventually questioned. Hopefully a humane view of a lot of categories of modern prisoner will eventually prevail. If not for humane reasons, then a simple cost benefit analysis should point us in another direction.

SQ -- it's because we're all equal now...

I worked in a male prison for 3 years.
There are many vunerable men in prison of carying ages and with different backgrounds.
There are many fathers in prison.
There is a great deal of self harm in male prisons.
There is a great deal of other problems in male prisons.

I don't think men and women should be treated differently. If they commit an offence they should receive the same punishment for that crime.

There is a really easy way to stay out of prison. Don't commit the crime!

There is a really easy way to stay out of prison. Don't commit the crime!

Or, to put it more accurately

There is a really easy way to stay out of prison. Don't be born into a dysfunctional family or one that doesn't value education (because the sort of low-skilled work you're hoping for doesn't exist any more), don't drop out of or be permanently excluded from school, don't be taken into care, don't develop mental health problems or addictions, don't hang around with the wrong people and don't go to prison once because if you do there's a high chance you'll go back again.

What you're overlooking, Hulababy, is that the proportion of prisoners who are vulnerable and have other significant problems is even higher for women in prison than it is for men. Nobody's denying that there are vulnerable men in prison - if anyone imagines that the typical male prisoner is Norman Stanley Fletcher or Al Capone they are sadly mistaken. And, as has been amply demonstrated by the stats and reports quoted here and the experience of others who have worked in the criminal justice system, women and men are treated differently now, with women often being treated more harshly.

One good way to stay out of prison is to stick to rape as your crime of choice.

Or corporate fraud - although you might develop senile dementia in prison, this might be miraculously cured the moment you are released early on health grounds.

mathanxiety Ooh contentious! But sadly, all too often true