If a government minister came out with the statement that more men should go to jail – that is, more men, just because they’re men, should be sentenced to incarceration – then he’d quite rightly be pilloried as the sexist scumbag that he’d just revealed himself to be. We’ve actually got a government minister making the same statement – that fewer women should be sent to jail, just because they’re women – and the progressives are nodding their heads in agreement.
This is not how the world should be, is it? Commit an offence that leads to being jugged, get jugged. What’s the difficulty with that?
He said: “I think we do have to be conscious that sometimes there are different issues with women offenders than there are with men.
“A lot of female offenders, for example, are themselves victims of crime, quite a high proportion are victims of domestic abuse themselves… a lot of them are non-violent, a lot of them [have] complex mental health issues we need to address.
“I think there is a very good point in saying that of the 4,000 or so female offenders who are in custody, how many of them can be dealt with through other means?
“Non-custodial sentences are certainly something to look at, more support in the community rather than within prisons is something we have to look at. There will of course still be women who need to be in prison, serious offenders, but I think there is scope to look at that number and I think that number could come down.”
What’s the damn point of a Tory Government if they’re going to come out with nonsense like that? For this is straight from the usual suspects over on the feminist and progressive side:
Women prisoner backgrounds
46% of women in prison report having suffered domestic violence.
(80% of the women WIP works with have reported experiencing domestic violence).53% of women in prison report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse during childhood.
31% women in prison have spent time in local authority care as a child.
Nice to see that usual reminder that being in the care of the state is the worst possible start to life, isn’t it?
But there’s something rather important here:
The chart below breaks down the non-adult male and female prison
population by offence category. The most common reason non-adults
were in prison was for VATP offences. 23% of all non-adult males had
committed this offence. This was a lower proportion compared to nonadult
women where VATP was the reason 30% were in prison.Sexual offences, drug offences, robbery and possession of weapons
offences accounted for a greater proportion of non-adult males
compared to females. The proportion of offenders in prison for criminal
damage and theft offences was greater for non-adult women compared
to non-adult males.
Or in chart form:
Sure, that’s the non-adult population. But the basic principle applies. Which of those offences shouldn’t lead to jail time? And which shouldn’t for females but still should for males?
There isn’t an answer here which isn’t driven by the most dreadful, vile, sexism is there?
Still, I suppose that’s the Tory Party at least upholding one time honoured principle then.
As always, fighting racism and fighting sexism is not a principle; it is a rhetorical tool that, in practice, is wielded in one direction only. There are no calls for men’s rights or for white people’s rights. “They’ve got enough rights already.” So we need remedial ‘isms. And euphemisms. For officials making excuses for lawbreakers, Massachusetts state judge Timothy Feely takes the cake, most recently freeing a Dominican heroin wholesaler on the grounds that he is not a heroin addict himself but was merely trying to support a family. “This was basically a money crime.” And prison time, after all,… Read more »
Btw, for those not up with the argot, VATP = Violence against the person.
Thank you. I didn’t know.
“80% of the women WIP works with have reported experiencing domestic violence” Worth considering that violence by men against women is treated entirely differently to violence by women against men. I doubt any of the guys reading this will have escaped getting a slap round the chops from some woman sometime in their lives. (If you haven’t you really should go somewhere else for you reading matter. You’re a disgrace to your sex & don’t belong in polite society). That is violent assault. If it happened with someone you’re in a relationship with, it would be classed as domestic violence.… Read more »
Entertainingly the given excuses for female prisoners, that they too have been the victim of unpleasant crimes before becoming criminals in turn is actually as if not more likely for male prisoners.
They will have experienced domestic violence (quite a bit at the hands of women), experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse and will have been in the care of local authorities.
The most likely victim of crimes are actually young men, particularly violence offences.