More Lib Dem lunacy

[Artesia]

Apparently Jo Swinson is going to put forward new penal reform proposals, including ending the use of prison for women, except for the most serious and violent crimes. The suggestion is that women should only be remanded in custody ‘if a prison sentence is ljkely’.

Given that the Lib Dem party line is that a woman is anyone who says they are a woman, male criminals could just identify themselves out of custodial sentences. Genius.....

All the bbc use the licence fee for is fucking abusing and gaslighting women anyway...

So a massive number of women are prosecuted in the UK for a ‘crime’ that doesn’t even exist elsewhere.

Alternatively, more women commit a crime which is a crime in the UK (and also, incidentally, in France), regardless of whether it exists elsewhere.

Reducing the user of prison is already in the Female Offender Strategy that the Government published last year.

Its hugely expensive to send someone to prison, and it will make them virtually unemployable when they get out so you have to consider the strain on the benefit system too, so even from a right-wing perspective it doesn’t make sense for minor ‘crimes’.

*use of prison obviously

I did a quick search for similar stats for men but couldn't find any. There's gov demographic data for the prison population as a whole, but not further separated by sex.

I would assume that this falls under some sort of 'coercion' defence for mitigation and that if the crime wasn't severe enough then it wouldn't result in a custodial sentence, for either sex.

I think that would only be relevant if the women were actually using "coercion" as a defence. I think it's more likely that some women are deliberately serving prison sentences on behalf of men because they've been coerced into believing they'll get a shorter sentence/ easier time in jail.

But certainly there are some crimes that no one should be going to jail for, of either sex.

GrabtharsHammar

It's not just "believing", they do (in terms of sentencing. Obviously the whole idea of "easier idea" depends of circumstance). Just the fourth result in my search...

digitalcommons.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1001&context=gang_lee

"Results. Specifically, we find that the effect of gender
on sentencing does vary by crime type, but not in a consistent or predicted fashion. For both property and drug offending, females are less likely to be sentenced to prison and also receive shorter sentences if they are sentenced to prison. For violent offending, however, females are no less likely than males to receive prison time, but for those who do, females receive substantially shorter sentences than males."

Ignoring the whatabouttery of why the women might be in prison in the first place or what defence they might have used, is it beyond the wit of a party which would probably style itself as being dedicated to equality to...

• make a list of all crimes that would carry a custodial sentence (the most serious and violent crimes noted above)
• make a list of mitigating circumstances to be applied equally regardless of gender (dependent children and presence of other parent, circumstances of crime, whatever else...)
• promise that those guidelines would be applied equally in all sentencing ? That would appear to me to be true equality, where gender truly doesn't matter.

Ha I was wondering when you'd appear BrainFart, you were so offended by the "all woman cab" idea the other day I imagine this has blown your hat off.

So basically women are more likely to be prosecuted than men for some crimes (i.e. avoided TV license payment) and men are more likely than women to be prosecuted for some crimes (i.e. drug offending)

I agree with you that if a crime isn't worthy of prison time then that should be true for both men and women, but I disagree that the motivation for a crime doesn't matter as it will have a bearing on reoffending rates. A woman who is convicted of drug use when actually she's just pretending the drugs are hers to protect her partner, is less of a future offending risk than a man who has actually used the drugs himself. The link between drug use and violent crime is also much stronger with male offenders.

The paper you linked to was interesting but it was based on data from Texas in the early 2000s. I was looking for current UK data.

A woman who is convicted of drug use when actually she's just pretending the drugs are hers to protect her partner, is less of a future offending risk than a man who has actually used the drugs himself.

Which is great, but all conjecture and whatbouttery, with some imaginary scenario. I even put in my posts that mitigation for the circumstances of the crime (are they a poor family stealing food to survive or just thieving bastards in ASDA?) should be taken into account, but the same for all sexes. Are you telling me there are no controlling female partners out there? What about lesbian couples ?

I get annoyed about these things because the central tenet of what I understand as equality is to treat people equally, regardless of sex, skin colour, sexual orientation. That these things don't matter. Instead I see these things being invoked as defining characteristics when it comes to how government is composed, or how an offender should be punished, and it strikes me as absurdly wrong. It seems to be "X should be treated equally, except for those situations where they need special treatment simply because they are X".

It is the principle. Everyone is equal before the law. Not "certain groups get more/less jail time", not "some things are crimes for one group but not for another".

There are only 4,000 women in prison, and the vast majority of them shouldn't be there. They have mental health problems, they have been abused (two thirds of women in prison have brain injuries as the result of domestic abuse), they are often in for trivial things like shoplifting or because they've been coerced into drug offences by pimps or other brutal males. Many are immigrants who have poor command of English. Many have had their children taken into care as a result of having to be in prison.

The whole thing's a mess, frankly. It's worth reading the Corston report, which suggests some very good alternatives to prison for women:

<a class="break-all" href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20180207155341/www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/corston-report-march-2007.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20180207155341/www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/corston-report-march-2007.pdf

However, the OP is absolutely right that if Swinson is idiotic enough to believe that anyone who claims to be a woman is a woman, then her proposal would open the way for men to avoid prison by claiming to be women. It really does represent a remarkable degree of cognitive dissonance on Swinson's part.

Fine, UK data from 2011

www.parity-uk.org/Briefing/MenandWomenandtheCJSfComplete.pdf

They do suggest, however, that in terms of the more severe sentencing, female offenders given immediate custody, and both average sentence length and average actual time served,are each substantially less in time for female than for male offenders.

Overall in magistrates’ courts in 2011, it seems that parity of treatment of female and male offenders applied generally, although a higher proportion of female offenders were fined (62.7% of all female offenders compared to 47.7% of all males) but a lower proportion given immediate custody (1.2% compared to 3.4% for males). (Table 4.3.8).

In general in the Crown courts, it appears that larger proportions of female offenders (out of all female defendants) were acquitted, or, if convicted, were more likely to be given a discharge, community sentence, or suspended sentence, compared to male offenders, but a
much lesser proportion given immediate imprisonment than males.

Females accounted in 2011 for 11.3% of all persons in Crown court proceedings (Table 4.3.7). Yet only 6.5% females were sentenced to immediate custody, and only 4.7% females were in the prison system in 2011 (Table 4.4.1).

Oh, and for what little it is worth, I have no problem with an all-female cabinet. I have an enormous problem with a cabinet being explicitly designed to be all-female, presented as some sort of progressive idea.

The reason why it's worth treating men and women as separate groups - in a way that we wouldn't, for example, treat white and black people as separate groups, or gays and straights as separate groups - is that we have separate estates for men and women.

Yes, of course we should say that, if coercion by a partner is a mitigating factor for a woman, it should be a mitigating factor for a man (though I doubt very much that that many men are coerced by partners or receive brain damage as a result of abuse by partners). Equally, we could say that the need of a single father not to be separated from his children are as important as the need of a single mother not to be separated from her children. (Though how many single fathers are there?)

But when we're thinking about how to manage the prison population, we need to think about how many prisons there are, and where they're located. And that means thinking about male prisons and female prisons independently of each other. So because the female prison population is so small, for example, there are very few women's prisons, and it means that inmates may end up being a very long way from their families.

You therefore need to think about how the female prison population as a whole differs from the male prison population as a whole and how to manage those estates as a consequence.

So, for example, you don't believe there are many men in prison who have been encouraged to take the blame for another man (or woman, but we'll assume it's a man) higher up in whatever food chain it may be ? That the (mainly male) teenagers who get groomed or caught up in gang 'debts' have no pressure on their decisions and its absolute inevitable path to prison or the morgue ? It might not be partners, but I feel sure that there are plenty of men in jail as a result of criminal activity encouraged, coerced or plain executed by somebody else.

Though how many single fathers are there?

Doesn't matter. They should be treated the same.

Seeing as women only make up 5% of the prison population, if we're "managing the prison population", surely it would actually have a much greater effect to see how to make large inroads into the 95% of the prison population that is male ?

And, by all means think about where prisons are located, but it is grossly unequal, and entirely discriminatory, to not punish women the same as men for the same crimes in the same circumstances. If that is the motivation, why not just advocate for building more women's prisons ? There aren't the same provisions for female criminals as male criminals, so we need to even it up.

Or, fairly reduce the prison population by making more crimes non-custodial (based on the crime, not gender). With a smaller prison population, but the same number of prisons, one would assume there'll be freed-up space for the women guilty of those crimes.

BrainFart: I think you've misunderstood my post.

I agree entirely with you that the many vulnerable men in prison who have, for example, mental health problems, or have been coerced into committing a crime, need to be supported in the same way that vulnerable women in prison need to be supported. Fortunately, there are plenty of campaigning organisations doing their best to change the way our criminal justice system treats vulnerable prisoners, both male and female.

My point, simply, is that there is an argument for thinking about women and men as two distinct groups precisely because we house them in different institutions. So it is useful sometimes to think about the problem in a broad brush way. When you build a women's prison, for example, you may well want to include facilities that enable a woman to look after a newborn baby, along with staff who can help her do that. With all respect to the 'equality' argument, I doubt that any of the 80,000 prisoners in the male estate have primary responsibility for looking after a newborn baby.

Similarly, because the number of women in prison is so small, and because the overwhelming majority of female prisoners are there for trivial crimes and/or are particularly vulnerable, then it does make sense to think about getting rid of female prisons altogether, finding alternative ways to put vulnerable women who have committed crimes back on track and building a handful of small, highly secure facilities for the tiny number of female prisoners who have committed terrible crimes.

I suspect there is much more common ground than difference in our opinions.

I agree, that women should not to go prison for trivial crimes, or if they are particularly vulnerable. But then why should men who commit trivial crimes or are vulnerable go to prison ? I am happy to get behind the idea of reserving prison for only the most serious crimes, and pumping the resources saved into rehabilitation / prevention. I just can't get over the fundamental inequality that says :

"Women A committed the same crime as Man B. Woman A got a fine / community service. Man B got a prison sentence. Not because of any difference in the gravity of the crime, but purely because of their gender".

Just fall back to my last suggestion - drastically reduce the prison population by making fewer crimes carry custodial sentences, and you'll free up the facilities for women prisoners to be "nearer their family" or whatever specious argument might be proffered for women's criminal sentencing being so much more lenient than men's.

There is no reason for gender to be a determining factor in sentencing.

The policy suggested makes a huge amount of sense if you look at female pattern crime and the profiles of female prisoners.

If you destroy the meaning of the word female this obviously no longer stands. So for example a good way of doing this would be allowing any male to say he is female at any point he wishes, and be treated as such.

Exactly Lumene- it’s not the policy itself, it’s the policy taken in the wider Lib Dem context of TWAW, full stop.

As a previous poster said, the cognitive dissonance it must take to recognise that women as a class have a different pattern of offending, different motivations and different needs, at the same time as driving a bus right through the definition of women is the thing that astounds me.

"Women A committed the same crime as Man B. Woman A got a fine / community service. Man B got a prison sentence. Not because of any difference in the gravity of the crime, but purely because of their gender".

I agree that this is a bad idea - both unfair and impossible to implement - which is why it'd be interesting to see if this is actually Swinson's plan and whether she has some data to support it, or whether she's just pulling stuff out of her arse.

The data you found on male vs female sentencing patterns is very interesting BrainFart and I'll read it in more detail later when I have time, but the information I was actually looking for was the male equivalent of this site:

www.womeninprison.org.uk/research/key-facts.php

Which says things like:

"the more previous custodial sentences a woman has had, the higher the reoffending rate"

If this is true - and your goal is social rehabilitation rather than just punishment - then it clearly makes sense to reduce the number of sentences a woman has had. Is it also true for men? Common sense says probably yes, but if for example there's evidence that men who serve custodial sentences are less likely to reoffend then it doesn't make sense to extend the "no prison" policy to men and women - in fact the opposite would be more effective.

You're looking at a prison sentence from a purely punitive point of view, using a crime + gravity of crime = length of prison sentence equation. In which case no, sex shouldn't make a difference - input same crime + seriousness, output same punishment. But if Swinson is using an equation that centres rehabilitation rather than punishment, then sex might very well matter. If your equation looks like crime + most effective method of rehabilitation = lowest rate of reoffending, then you have to allow for different demographics to respond better to different methods. For women it might be that drug possession + community service = unlikely to reoffend whilst for men drug possession + community service = very likely to reoffend - in this case it's not a good idea to apply the same methods to both sexes.

It's very well and good to say "I don't see sex/ race etc etc" but we live in a world built on structural inequality and we need to see those things because policy is most effective when it treats different groups according to their different needs. If you treat every one the same you may get an equal society, but you won't get a fair one.

In conclusion, we need more detail on what Swinson is aiming to achieve and why she thinks this is the best way to achieve it.

There is a move to reduce custodial sentences of less than a year since there is good evidence that shorter sentences do nothing to reduce reoffending rates. A shorter sentence means that there is a huge disruption to the lives of prisoners and their families and it has no real effect on the crime rate. While in prison they cannot access drug rehab schemes or restorative justice because they aren't inside long enough. If they are outside, on a community service order, they can,

Given that, in the main, women's crime tends not to be violent in nature, this move will effectively take large numbers of women out of the custodial side of the criminal justice system

On a different note, given that 1 in 50 male prisoners identify as trans - making men who have been sentenced for crimes 4 X more likely to identify as women than men who haven't - if women stop going to jail at all I predict that number will rise to 1 in 1. Seriously, every bugger in the male estate will discover his inner woman over night. Therefore, on the grounds that I think it'd be hilarious watching people flail around explaining it, I think it's a great idea.

@ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving

Thank you for taking the time to write your post, it is a much more complete way of seeing things than I was expressing. If that is indeed the full vision of the Lib Dems, to ensure the lowest rates of reoffending and rehabilitation, regardless of gender, then I am behind that. In which case I encourage them to get a much better PR person to explain it more fully, and also make it look less like they're only focusing on women and leaving men to rot in prison.

I encourage them to get a much better PR person to explain it more fully, and also make it look less like they're only focusing on women and leaving men to rot in prison.

Definitely, though whatever the details of the policy I doubt that the Daily Clickbait has given a fair and nuanced representation of it! I can't find any mention of her saying this anywhere else, including her own social media.