Date published: 2005/03/23
The BBC says:
As the prison population rises, more and more women are being locked up. Critics, however, believe women offenders should be treated differently from men and now the government has outlined plans to build female rehabilitation centres as an alternative to jail.
The fact the female prison population has nearly trebled in the last 10 years will be of little concern to some people. The punishment fits the crime, they may say.
But the government is investigating another option. Home Secretary Charles Clarke has just allocated £9m to build two new female rehabilitation centres, following two pioneering schemes in Glasgow and Worcester. Mr Clarke is concerned that locking up women breaks up families.
The new "community and support centres" will offer non-violent female offenders "one-stop shop" services for help with issues such as drug abuse, mental health, housing, childcare and domestic violence.
Campaigners say the rocketing numbers of women prisoners is a shocking story because most female offences are theft-related and the causes of female crime differ to male crime, so require a different response.
For instance, they claim that half of women prisoners - far more than men - have suffered physical, sexual or mental abuse.
Can you imagine the BBC running this kind of blatantly sexist story if the male and female roles were reversed? If most female offences are theft-related and that is somehow a mitigating circumstance then it ought to be just as mitigating for male prisoners incarcerated for theft, i.e. this should not be an issue of gender but of how specific crimes are punished. Also, the idea that male prisoners have not suffered physical or mental abuse or equally damaging societal treatment before they ended up as criminals beggars belief. You do not see many children of the middle class ending up as prisoners when they are adults. And it is amazing that Mr Clarke is allegedly concerned that locking up women breaks up families but he supposedly doesn't care that locking up men breaks up families. (But you have to wonder if this is the opinion of Mr Clarke or just the opinion of the BBC, distorting the opinion of Mr Clarke.)
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