It would not be equitable to only send men to prison.

This piece made me mad. https://archive.is/efN99 Its thesis is that women should not be sent to prison. But men should be. I am against this on principle. Justice doesn’t care who you are. That is what makes it justice. That is what is meant by justice is blind. However, I will still go through the arguments point by point.

“Women almost never scare us; commit random acts of serious violence; violate our sexual integrity; or form organised crime networks and yet their prisons numbers are now the highest in recorded history.”

Even when men don’t scare us, their acts are not random, not rapacious, and not involved organized crime, men still go to prison for violating the criminal law. So, none of that is an argument against incarcerating women if you are still going to incarcerate men for things like tax evasion.

“The homogeneity of the human species breaks down when it comes to criminal behaviour. Women, who constitute slightly more than 50% of population, commit only about 20% of all crime. They commit even a lower portion of all serious crime.”

But that means that some women still commit crimes that would land them in prison if they were men. So its not an argument for abolishing the incarceration of women entirely if you still support the incarceration of men.

“Moreover, when it comes to sexual offences, rounded off to the nearest whole number, women constitute 0% of all offenders – that’s right, zero.”

When you include crimes committed in correctional facilities and cases where the victim is made to penetrate the perpetrator against their will, women are as likely to commit sexual offenses as men in America. [1] I admit that I don’t have data on the rest of the world. But I don’t know of any reason to suspect that it is different in the rest of the world for that same reason. So the idea that women commit 0% of sexual offenses is not supported by the evidence that we now have.

“Women do of course commit homicide offences, but nearly always the victim is a relative and the crime was committed against the backdrop of an abusive relationship or depressive mindset. All homicides are heinous crimes but the types of homicides committed by women rarely involve random victims and hence do not engender community fear.”

But when men kill someone who his not a random victim and therefore does not engender community fear, they still go to prison. Engendering community fear is simply not necessary for incarceration in the system that we now have.

“There are four major differences between male and female offenders. First, women are much less likely to reoffend than men. Their recidivism levels are at least 10% lower in both the US and Australia.”

That is an argument for the incarceration of women. It means that incarceration is more effective on women than it is on men when it comes to rehabilitation.

“Second, when women are imprisoned they suffer more. They have higher rates of mental illness, making it more difficult for them to adapt to and cope with the prison setting. And US studies show that when in prison they are three times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than male prisoners.”

This is more compelling than the other points. However, when men who suffer from mental illness still go to prison. When men are victims of sexual abuse, they still go to prison. So, this is a solid argument for changing women’s prisons. But, its not an argument for abolishing women’s prisons entirely if you are still going to incarcerate men. Plus, mental illness and sexual abuse, while bad, are not comprehensive measures of suffering. To be a comprehensive measure of suffering, you would need to include financial hardship from incarceration, physical injury and illness in prison, death in prison, and the effects of incarceration after inmates leave prison. So the evidence presented here doesn’t actually show that women suffer from imprisonment more than men do.

“Third, society suffers more when we remove a female from it and place her behind a prison wall. More than 50% of incarcerated women are single parents and even in two-parent households, female prisoners typically assume the main child nurturing role. In relation to non-parental dependency, the majority of carers (60%) are females.”

To be fair, the idea that incarcerating women costs society more than incarcerating men is backed up by the world health organization. [2] But nevertheless, it likely isn’t true. The only objective way to measure anyone’s value to society is how much money they make. By that measure, men are more valuable than women. [3] Granted, incarcerated men and incarcerated women will not necessarily hold all the same demographic characteristics as their non-incarcerated counterparts. So women who are incarcerated could make more money than men who are incarcerated. But as far as I know, no one makes that argument and there is no particular reason to believe it. So I do not believe that incarcerating women costs society more than incarcerating men. But even if it is true, it doesn’t matter. Men who perform critical societal functions, like medical doctors, public servants, and businessmen, still go to prison for breaking the law. So even if you accept the premise that the labor provided by women is more important than the labor provided by men, this still isn’t an argument for incarcerating women, but not men.

“Finally, women are often less culpable when they commit crime. There is a profoundly devastating link between child sexual and violent victimisation and female offending. US studies show that 23% to 37% of female prisoners reported that they had been physically or sexually abused prior to the age of 18. The rate is even higher in Australia. Incarcerating females is often simply a lamentable case of victimising the victimised.”

Unless you compare those statistics to those for men, the rate of physical or sexual victimization for women is meaningless. Men who were physically or sexually abused as minors can still go to prison for breaking the law. So again, this isn’t an argument for not incarcerating women but continuing to incarcerate men.

“ The sentencing system should be reformed radically to deal more fairly with female offending. The starting position is that no female offender should be imprisoned. In relation to most forms of crime, they should be dealt with by way of intermediate sanctions including the greater use of electronic monitoring.” Why? Who benefits from this?

“In the rare instances that women commit heinous crimes, community protection and the need to impose proportionate penalties requires a prison term but this should be the exception, not the increasing norm. The exception is so rare that the utopia of closing prisons would readily become a reality.”

If closing prisons is the goal, then just abolishing prison would be a better way. It would close all prisons as opposed to merely closing some prisons, and it would not create another two tiered justice system.

“Implementing these changes will not prejudice male offenders. In fact, it is likely that the opposite will occur. It will encourage a normatively sound and empirically grounded assessment of sentencing law and policy. This would result in a bifurcated sentencing system, whereby imprisonment was largely reserved for only serious sexual and violent offenders. This approach would greatly benefit the approximately 50% of male US and Australian inmates who are imprisoned for other types of crimes, such as drug and property offences.”

You can also get those benefits by only incarcerating people convicted of serious sexual or violent offences regardless of their gender. Plus, only incarcerating men would prejudice the system against men by definition.

“The approach would save the community billions of dollars annually and go a long way to correcting the unfathomable public policy misstep which has resulted in 10 American states spending more on prisons than higher education. Best of all, it would not cause the slightest reduction to community safety.”

But we can get those same benefits by only incarcerating people convicted of serious violent or sexual crimes regardless of gender.

So, I would prefer that we only incarcerate people convicted of serious violent or sexual crimes regardless of gender to only sending men to prison. But the policies that seem the most reasonable and equitable are either giving women and men the same prison sentences for the same crimes, or abolishing prison entirely.

[1] Sexual victimization perpetrated by women: Federal data reveal

surprising prevalence

Lara Stemple a,⁎, Andrew Flores b, Ilan H Meyer c Aggression and Violent Behavior 34 (2017) 302–311

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[2] Women’s health

in prison

Correcting gender inequity

in prison health

2009 UNODOC world health organization Europe page 9

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[3] https://www.payscale.com/gender-lifetime-earnings-gap