This is what we’re being told at least, that women tend to commit crimes so as to pay for the drugs of another. This is clearly showing how women take responsibility for the wider family, the household, it’s part of caring and sharing and thus don’t jail women.
On the other hand we could consider the actual findings, rather than the gloss:
Half of the women in prison committed crimes to support another person’s drug use, mostly men, prison charities have revealed.
The data, based on Ministry of Justice (MoJ) surveys, shows 48 per cent of female inmates committed crimes to pay for their partner’s or another person’s drug habit. This was more than double the 22 per cent of men who reported the same.
Women were also more likely to be serving a sentence for theft than for violence with 80 per cent of the offences involving shoplifting. Some 28 per cent of women’s crimes are financially motivated compared to 20 per cent of men’s.
The thing to recall is that you rarely, if ever, get sent to jail for burglary, shoplifting, drugs possession and the like. Not solely for any of them at least. To end up in pokey you’ve – pretty much, none of this will be exact – got to commit a combination of them, over a period of time, with multiple offences.
At which point women are inside for offences to feed the drug habit of another. No, the correct statement is that women who are inside have committed offences to feed the drug habits of another. What they’re inside for might be that, might not be. The statement is that among the roster of the things they’ve been jailed for is that feeding another’s habit.
Now that we’ve clarified matters of course we have to admit that it’ll make no difference. Give it two days and we’ll be told that she only did it for Darren, who’s wurf it, therefore release her now.
That men might – and do – commit crimes to feed their families will be set aside ‘cuz reasons.
No doubt I’m too cynical, but when I see an article like this one my first thought is “how do you know that’s the reason?”. In my experience the people interviewing these unfortunate women take their word for it – “I just stole the money ‘cuz my boyfriend needed drugs”. If we’re going to be this naïve we can let just about everybody out of prison – “everybody who’s really innocent or only committed a crime out of necessity or swears never to do it again, queue up over here to pick up your things”.
Equal Rights! No, wait a bit…..