Don't release violent male offenders, repurpose women's prisons for them instead

[CohensDiamondTeeth]

Article in the Telegraph.

Instead lets release women from prison instead, and repurpose their prisons to house the men.

It sounds like an excellent idea to me!

Repurpose women’s prisons for men, campaigners tell Andy Burnham

They are suggesting that non violent women are released, then by moving the women into fewer prisons we would free up an entire prison for the least dangerous male prisoners to move into.

Men who should be in prison but are not violent. Maybe they are men towards the end of their sentence, maybe older men, maybe men who have had years of good behaviour.

Essentially the women's prison would become a new low security prison, freeing up spaces in the other men's prisons for higher security offenders.

Your stats don’t line up with the governments. (Linked above) though?

All of which might sound ok in theory. But a quick google tells me that female prisoners make up between 4 and 7 percent of the prison population. The maths doesn’t work.

And even if there was numerical capacity - it’s exactly the kind of public sector project that ends up with higher costs and unintended consequences.

Prison population by offence on p25 and by sex on p23, ‘Justice in Numbers Pocket’ book pub July 2026 by Ministry of Justice?

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a4fa9171228eb26a4cab6d5/JiN_Pocketbook_2026-07-09.pdf

IF a woman commits the same crime as a man.

Male and female prisoners have very different offending profiles.

Yes. I didn't mean to imply that ALL women prisoners should be released above purely on the basis of their sex, but it is very clear than many are simply in for theft, shoplifting and non-payment of TV licence fines etc. I think many of the 3500 odd women who are not there for violent offences could, and should, be releasd. As far as I can see this numbers about 2500 who might be released - the remaining 1000 are guilty of more serious and violent crime (assault and battery, assault of emergency workers, severe violence/homicide and child neglect/cruelty).

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023-html

Do show me where I said I'd rather violent men were released rather than non violent women. You can't can you because I haven't said that. I think if we need to let people out early it should depend on what they did not their sex.

Did you deliberately make that up or was it a mistake?

You've also get to remember that we imprison people to protect others.

A woman who has committed a crime is far less dangerous than the male equivalent. They are less likely to try to reoffend. if they do, they are less physically able to cause harm.

The number of women in prison at any one time should be in the double figures.

That would free up around 5% extra capacity for the male estate. That's not transformative, but would make a real difference.

As a group but not as individuals or do you think all men are in for serious violent crimes and women are never in for serious violent crimes?

Which woman? Rose West maybe. Some women or most women but to say every woman prisoner is less dangerous than every male prisoner is ridiculous.

So you agree it depends on what they did not their sex.

Yeah - they don’t commit the same crimes. Women end up inside for lesser offences. Like not having a TV Licence.

I have a strong suspicion that for a significant number of women in prison, there is a man ‘behind’ their crimes (either getting them addicted to drugs, coercion, domestic abuse, etc.). Haven’t got any stats but ChatGPT agrees with me.

Otherwise, it’s an excellent idea to concentrate on getting more women out of prison so their spaces can be used for dangerous men.

Eh?! Where have I said that?!

Yes, exactly this too. Where a woman has co-offended with a man, or where she has been induced or encouraged by a man, the better thing is not to lock the woman up. That achieves nothing. The best thing to protect society is to remove the man from the picture, and provide the woman with support.

Obviously there are exceptions (Rose West, anyone else?) but I suspect this will cover most women offenders. I couldn't immediately find any stats on the point, possibly because the research hasn't been done.

I'm an equal opportunist, a woman should get the same time for doing the same crime as a man.

I am not completely against this but if some of the prisons for women become prisons for men then the women who are still in in prison will be in a much smaller estate and are likely to be placed even further away from their social support network.

This is already an issue for a lot of female prisoners and their children and other social networks.

I've been trying to ask you to tell me what you think, because it seems like that's what you are saying.

I've answered your question upthread, but you still keep swerving this one of mine.

So who would you rather see get early release between these two groups in the article and thread topic? Either violent male offenders who have committed crimes like murder, rape or child sexual abuse, or, non-violent female offenders who committed crimes like shoplifting or council tax/TV licence non-payment?

Obviously as a group.
Stats are a technique for looking at grouped data.

I've said it more than once. I think if violent men are released early (not a good idea) then women should be as well (also not a good idea)

A better idea is releasing prisoners who committed non violent/not serious offences. Sex of prisoner it being relevant. I honestly don't understand why that is so hard to understand.

You said a woman is far less dangerous. Not always as RW demonstrates.

Are you seriously suggesting that Rose West was more dangerous than her husband?

That's an incredible claim to make.

She was certainly as dangerous, she helped him and then covered up for him.

I think we really need to be clear and use actual data, not just received wisdom here. This is a very serious matter, both for public safety and for women in the criminal justice system.

1 - The idea that roughly 2,500 women in prison are there for non-violent offences is not supported by the current Ministry of Justice figures. On 31 March 2026 there were 3,461 women in prison, including 848 on remand. Of the 2,593 women serving immediate custodial sentences, 1,063 were sentenced for violence against the person, 144 for sexual offences and 217 for robbery: 1,424 women, or 54.9%, across those three categories alone. The official tables do not provide a simple violent/non-violent total, so subtracting the “violence against the person” category from the whole female population is not valid.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2025
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69f0c7400bb62e692c5d6dae/prison-population-31-Mar-2026.ods

2 - Women are not routinely in prison merely because they could not pay council tax or a TV-licence fine. The Government says nobody has been imprisoned for council-tax non-payment as their main offence since 2018; committal is possible only after a finding of wilful refusal or culpable neglect, not simple inability to pay. On 31 March 2026 there were just two female fine defaulters in prison for all kinds of fines combined. For TV licensing, there were zero people in prison for failure to pay the fine on 30 June 2020; 91 custodial sentences in 2015–18 arose from failure to pay a court-imposed fine, not from licence evasion itself.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65ba708df51b1000136a7e4a/CouncilTax_collection-_government_response.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-publishes-response-to-decriminalising-tv-licence-evasion

3 - It is also incorrect that most women in prison are serving sentences of under 12 months for fraud and petty theft. There were 349 sentenced women serving less than 12 months: 10.1% of all women in custody and 13.4% of sentenced women. In the immediate-custody offence table there were 404 women sentenced for theft and 63 for fraud, compared with 1,063 for violence against the person. Source: the same MoJ prison-population publication and spreadsheet above.

4 - It is plainly wrong that only the “tiny handful” of women who commit murder belong in prison, or that women in custody are almost all harmless petty offenders. The current figures include 1,063 women sentenced for violence against the person, 144 for sexual offences and 217 for robbery, as well as serious non-violent offences whose victims may still suffer grave harm.

5 - Murderers are not being released early under these schemes. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence; release can occur only after the minimum term and a Parole Board risk decision, while some offenders receive whole-life orders. The Sentencing Act 2026 also excludes life sentences, IPP sentences and extended determinate sentences from earlier release. The “killer” example reported in the Telegraph involved manslaughter, not murder.

https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/about-sentencing/types-of-sentence/life-sentences/
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2026/2/notes/division/7/index.htm

6 - Early release has not been restricted to men. In October–December 2025, SDS40 produced 10,164 releases from male establishments and 1,013 from female establishments. The 2026 progression model is based on sentence type, offence and behaviour, not sex.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69f1d916c42061e837e3ac16/Standard_Determinate_Sentences__SDS40release_data__England_and_Wales.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sentencing-bill-2025/sentencing-bill-progression-measures-factsheet

7 - “Women reoffend less” needs an important qualification. Across all offenders in the January–March 2024 cohort, the female proven-reoffending rate was lower: 24.7%, versus 29.7% for men. But among people released from prison in the April 2023–March 2024 data tool, 1,752 of 3,491 women reoffended (50.2%). Combining comparable male category A–D/local prison groups gives 18,253 of 44,297 (41.2%). Women in that prison-release cohort also recorded more reoffences per reoffender, 8.54 versus 6.74. These are unadjusted figures and do not prove that sex causes the difference, but they directly contradict the blanket claim about female prisoners.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/proven-reoffending-statistics-january-to-march-2024/proven-reoffending-statistics-january-to-march-2024
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6978dace316fd8f801552068/PRSQ_adult_releasing_prison_data_tool_apr23_mar24.xlsx

8 - Women do not simply receive “the same time” as men in practice. In the official 2023 comparison, women convicted of indictable offences were 28% less likely than men to receive immediate custody. For theft the figures were 20% for women and 37% for men; for violence against the person, 15% and 41%. Average custodial sentence length was 12.2 months for women and 21.8 for men, although the MoJ cautions that the different offence mix explains part of that gap.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023/statistics-on-women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2023-html

9 - It is too sweeping to say women’s prisons are not secure or reinforced. The women’s estate includes both open and closed prisons. Bronzefield is a purpose-built closed prison holding restricted-status/high-risk women. It is fair to say there is no women’s prison built to the same high-security specification as the male high-security estate, so conversion could require additional work; that is not evidence that conversion would necessarily be “prohibitively expensive”.

https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/05/Restricted-status-thematic-web-2023.pdf
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/Bronzefield-Web-2018-1.pdf

10. Repurposing one women’s prison would not create 3,500 places. Approximately 3,500 is the entire female prison population. Bronzefield, for example, held 483 women on 31 March 2026. Nor does the Telegraph proposal itself establish the cost or feasibility: the article reports a campaign proposal to repurpose at least one prison, not an implemented, costed government plan. The latest overall annual cost per prisoner was £56,618, but that does not tell us what converting a particular establishment would cost. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/25/repurpose-womens-prisons-men-government-urged-tories-uk/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69bbeea2f7b1c24d8e23ce44/costs-per-place-costs-per-prisoner-2024-2025-summary.pdf

He isn't going to be released early is he?

There is some evidence she was the one in control. He wasn't very bright. She killed his daughter while he was in prison. Defend her all you like she was at least as dangerous as him.