NCJ Number
196763
Journal
Criminal Justice Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2002 Pages: 277-301
Editor(s)
George Mair,
Tim Newburn
Date Published
August 2002
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This articles discusses the paradox that exists between increasing penalty and women's pathways into crime, and argues that more radical shifts in sentencing policy and practice are required to stem the increasingly rapid flow of women being sent to prison.
Abstract
The fact that the adverse social and economic situation of women who are at risk of offending remains unchanged, yet those women are receiving increasing penalty, including receptions into women's prisons. The media tend to represent women's crime as getting much worse, yet the fact is that relatively few women commit offenses and their crime pattern is not out of line with the general pattern of crime increase. Also, those who do offend commit less serious offenses, such as prostitution, failing to pay for a TV license, and summary offenses relating to a failure to ensure their child's regular school attendance. Women make up half of those proceeded against for cruelty or neglect of children. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the latter offense, most offenses are largely financial in nature. It is noted that research does not support the idea that more equal sentencing practices have contributed to the increased number of women who are being imprisoned, nor does the data support the idea that the type of women being sentenced to imprisonment has changed. However, it is speculated that older petty persistent female offenders and less serious violent female offenders, along with foreign national women for drug offenses are driving the female prison population upwards. Tables include information on reception into prison under sentence by sex; persons age 21 and over sentenced for indictable offenses by sex and type of sentence or order; percentage of women and men sentenced in the Crown Court in magistrates' courts to imprisonment for all offenses and selected offenses in 2000 and 1990; receptions into prisons under sentence of immediate imprisonment by offense group and sex, and population of adults in prison under sentence by number of previous convictions by sex. It is concluded that there is good reason, based on research and statistics, to reduce the rate at which women are imprisoned in Great Britain. Tables, references