London has a new program to automatically exempt women from jail for certain crimes. This is a blatant violation of equal rights, it's like a two-tiered justice system.

So, the Mayor's office has just announced a new program where female offenders will be spared prison. It is called the The program is called The Female Offender Diversion Project pilot. Here's another article on it.

It's worth noting that the London Deputy of policing and crime, Sophie Linden, is former Hackney MP who tried passing a 1000 pound fine for being homeless.

In my opinion, this is very troubling and disingenuous. This is a blatant discrimination and indefensible inequality. It is creating a separate justice system for men and women where a man is automatically treated worse simply for being male. It is direct inequality under law- this is creating a two-tiered justice system where a male and female offender are automatically treated differently simply for their gender. The arguments given are very illogical and really don't hold up:

Research found women more likely to reoffend than men after a short sentence

So why is this a justification for morelenient treatment? This makes absolutely no sense as a reason,. If anything, if males were more likely to re-offend, it would be said that they deserve harsher punishment because of it.

And couldn't it be likely that female offenders offend more because they receive more lenient treatment to begin with. This has been the standard legal practice in the UK for over a year...so wouldn't it make sense that the group that knows they face less consequences would be more likely to re-offend? This article is an example of that, a woman repeated arrested for shoplifting saying she does it over and over again because the consequences are so minor.

I did some research, and found this powerpoint from the Ministry of Justice. It disputes the argument that women are more likely to offend...on the bottom right, you'll see the rates for reoffending is higher for males (31%) than females (23%)

So that that argument is based on statistics that aren't even true. Either way, still a poor argument IMO.

The move to help 1,000 female criminals over the next two years has been launched by London Mayor Sadiq Khan after research found women are more likely than men to be sent to prison for a first-time offence.

This is extremely unlikely to be true, given the above...in fact, it's logically impossible...it's actually the law to exempt women from prison for minor offenses, and has been for a year...there is absolutely no way female offenders are more likely to be sent to prison for a first offense than male offenders. I would like to see that data publicly. Even so, it's not a justification for a separate and distinct legal system.

Shoplifters, drug users, thieves and low-level offenders will instead be referred to specialist services for help with mental health problems and substance abuse.

But if the issue is to address factors like mental health and substance abuse, why make it a gendered program? Why not make it a program that focuses on mental health and drug offenses? The argument that women are "more likely" to be affected by those things doesn't hold water, because under this program, a woman who isnt affected by one of these factors still benefits from the program, while a man who is affected wouldn't, simply for his gender. There's no sense in making it a law that treats gender as an absolute. In fact, doesn't so is blatantly discriminatory. To grant 50% of the population automatic immunity from prison for theft is absurd.

A lack of a women’s prison in London means women are taken further away from their families and support networks, which makes the process of rehabilitation more difficult and women entering custody are at high risk of losing their accommodation and having significantly worse employment outcomes than men

This argument is absurd...the problem then would be the lack of women's prisons in London. This feels setup, for the past few years there have been calls to close women's prisons. Now this has happened, it's being presented as a reason why women need to be treated even more leniently.

So now, a woman with no mental health issues or drug issues who steals will be automatically spared prison, whereas a homeless man who is starving who shoplifts will be sent to prison. 50% of the population of London now knows they can commit theft with impunity from prison. This seems like a very dangerous circumstance.