For as long as I can remember justice has not been gender specific.
Now all of a sudden we have the feminist sounding Women's Justice Taskforce publishing a report about women's justice called Reforming Women’s Justice.
The BBC reports Women's prisons should close, says justice taskforce
Why only women's prisons and not men's prisons as well?
I have never heard of men's justice. I don't agree with the idea of having a women's justice and a men's justice, only non gender specific justice. What is the whole point of having sex discrimination legislation to combat sex discrimination only to introduce the idea of women's justice? Isn't this simply sex discrimination?
yes, I can see your point JHL, but is it not a good start? Isn't this better than a call for harsher sentencing and more prison? So it starts in women's prison's, so it might hopefully extend to men's prisons too one day soon. Freeing up people is surely a good thing, the division between men's and women's jails already exists.
ReplyDelete"The focus should be on health, housing and treatment for drug addiction to reduce reoffending," says the report. Gender specific?
ReplyDelete"It is true that many women end up in prison for low-level crime as a result of repeat offending and a failure to respond to non-custodial alternatives.
"Better national provision of women-focused community disposals could result in more successful completion of community orders, lower rates of reoffending and fewer women being sent to prison."
Does the logic of this argument not apply equally to men? Prison presently fails both sexes equally.
Yes, you are definately right there Charles. But what do you do?
ReplyDeleteDivide and rule is the oldest trick in the book (and a very effective one too).
We ought to put that across somehow in publications or wherever:- that if community resources will lead to lower offending rates for women then it will for men too, and yes, we need community resources and less sentencing. Agreed.