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.....

I think there is an argument for saying that sex and gender should come into it. Eg crime X may be committed by both men and women, and the impact on the victim/society may be the same, but the motivation might be very different.

We know women are more likely to be single mothers and living in poverty. Theft for them may be because they can't afford to feed and clothe their children and can't afford childcare to work, whereas that's not likely to be the case for men. If the driver for committing a crime is a purely selfish one, I think that should attract a harsher punishment. Of course, in the unlikely event that a man was in the exact same position as many women in prison are (single parent, poverty, etc) then the same mitigation should apply, but there's no getting away from this being a gendered issue.

Can I check I've understood this correctly?

Women make up 5% of the prison population (1 in 20).

1 in 50 male prisoners identify as women - just under 2% of the total prison population.

So if self id went ahead, around 28% of the people in women's prisons could be natal males?
1.9 ÷ (1.9 + 5) = 0.28

There just under 4000 women in prison atm (I assume that stat doesn't include TW, but who knows) and an estimated 1500 prisoners with trans identities. The vast majority of those prisoners are MtF in the male estate. So if they were all housed in the female estate (as the lib dems have pledged to do in their 2017 manifesto) then TW would make up 23% of prisoners in the female estates. I've rounded the numbers up but it's in that ballpark.

In fairness to the lib dems when they wrote their manifesto the number of TW in prison was estimated to be tens not hundreds or thousands, but even a small number of TW in women's prison is catastrophic for female prisoners. Just shows how naive the lib dems are and how little they actually care about women.

There just under 4000 women in prison atm (I assume that stat doesn't include TW, but who knows)

It will include TW. The MoJ’s data on trans prisoners is rather sketchy and not fit for the purpose of safeguarding female prisoners. They aren’t even sure how many TW they have as some may be ‘undocumented’ ...

It'd probs only include the TW in women's prison already though don't you think, not those who have IDed since going inside? So I think that's only a few atm. I mean, even one is too many, but from a stats POV I doubt it's high enough to skew them significantly.

I suspect if they are in a woman’s prison the govt counts them as women given what I know about the history of stats. Not 100% sure though.

FPFW have done some great in-depth research on this. And there was the BBC ‘factcheck’ furore which got written up too.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/is-the-bbc-scared-of-the-transgender-debate/amp/

Justice is not equal between men and women. Men always get harsher punishment for same crime.

What data are you basing that on Azeema ?

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

Sounds like a splendid idea.

Working class women are incarcerated for the crime of poverty on an industrial scale on this island, and they often unfairly have their children taken from them as a result.

Well done Jo Swinson.

You don’t tend to go to prison for mere theft. I do think mitigating factors should be taken into account like many mentioned but it shouldn’t just be purely based on sex even if in practice it does end up that way

There have been many studies. This one says
“Men are 3.4 times more likely than women to be sent to prison for the same crime, men receive sentences which are 1.64 times longer than women’s for the same crime, and men actually serve 10% more of their sentence on average than women, for no obvious reason.”

Data at empathygap.uk/?p=215

This from Wikipedia on sentencing disparity in US. Just like racism mean non whites get longer sentences, sexism mean men get longer sentences.
“A 2001 University of Georgia study found substantial disparity in criminal sentencing men and women received "after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables". The study found that in US federal courts, "blacks and males are... less likely to get no prison term when that option is available; less likely to receive downward departures [from the guidelines]; and more likely to receive upward adjustments and, conditioned on having a downward departure, receive smaller reductions than whites and females".[8]

In 2012 Sonja B. Starr from University of Michigan Law School found that "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted", also based on data from US federal court cases.[9][10]

In 2006, Ann Martin Stacey and Cassia Spohn found that women receive more lenient sentences than men after controlling for presumptive sentence, family responsibilities, offender characteristics, and other legally relevant variables, based on examination of three US district courts.[11]”