Short Take: Pink Prisons

Everyone knows women start out made of “sugar and spice, and everything nice.” But some change over time and end up committing crimes. Not real crimes, according to Professor Mirko Bagaric, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Sentencing at Deakin University, Melbourne, at the Guardian, but girl crimes.

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.

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.

And, indeed, women commit fewer crimes than men. So much for gender being merely a social construct. And the crimes they commit tend to be different as well.

Moreover, when it comes to sexual offences, rounded off to the nearest whole number, women constitute 0% of all offenders – that’s right, zero. The crimes they most commonly commit are drug and property offences. Thus, in the US, approximately 30% of female prisoners are incarcerated for property offences, and a further 26% for drug offences. The percentages for these offences are 26% and 17%, respectively, in Australia.

Then again, that doesn’t mean that women don’t occasionally commit heinous crimes, but different heinous crimes.

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.

Lest one leap to mistaken assumptions, by “relative,” this means they murder their children sometimes. The fact that women tend more toward depression doesn’t make their dead babies feel any better about it, but then, a fuller explanation of filicide might not serve the purpose of this op-ed very well.

Hillary Clinton is right to assert that the sentencing system should be reformed to reduce the growing number of female prisoners but the changes should go much further than has been suggested. We should implement concrete targets to remove the stains on our landscape and societal ethic that are women’s prisons.

This is gratuitously tossed into the mix, both there and here, as a reminder why Hillary lost the unlosable election. There are far too many people in prison, so let’s save the women. And what makes this stain on our landscape so unequal?

In the United States women commit only 17% of felonies.

Women now comprise 8% of prisoners in the United States.

Math is hard, of course, but this isn’t higher level math. If women commit 17% of felonies, but only comprise 8% of prisoners, they’re doing better than the men. You want equality? Then you will need another 9% of women in prison.  But when it comes to crime, equality is not the goal.

Nearly every one of these incarcerated women is the victim of a perverse and lazy policy disfigurement that fails to acknowledge the marked differences between female and male offenders. The differences are so stark that not only should women be treated more leniently because they commit less serious crime but they should also be treated more leniently when they commit the same crime as a man.

No cites to support these claims, but then, only a misogynist would doubt that women are inherently better than men, even though gender is only a social construct and there is no such thing as biological gender.

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.

But what about men? Well, aside from the fact that men suck and who cares about them, Bagaric argues that this rising tide of reform will help everyone, even if it helps women far more.

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.

One would normally expect an academic to know better than to preface speculation with “in fact,” but then, when diving down the rabbit hole, it’s best to close one’s eyes as tightly as possible.

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.

Don’t get hung up in the silly numbers or conflation of “serious sexual” offenses with violence, because what else would you expect of someone arguing that a meteor destroys the earth and women are affected most. The question remains, is it helpful or counterproductive to try to squeeze serious issues of sentencing reform into absurd gender narratives? Or is that gender binary of women really so criminally different that they should be entitled to a presumption of non-incarceration, and only those toxic males deserve prison?

H/T Mark Bennett and Neontaster

36 thoughts on “Short Take: Pink Prisons

  1. Keith

    Women almost never scare us; commit random acts of serious violence”

    He can see no reason cause there are no reasons. What reason do you need to be sure?

    And when it happens, it’s not her fault, see the silicon chip inside her head got switched to overload.

    Then you will need another 9% of women [offenders] in prison.

    Couldn’t resist trying math, could ya? stick to dividing by 3.

    Typo: incarcetation. Where’s David?

    1. SHG Post author

      Yes, where’s David? David. Oh, David? He corrects my math too. Or at least he used to.

      How do you know Bagaric’s pronoun is “he”?

      1. D-Poll

        Blame the Boomtown Rats for that one. Products of an earlier era and all that. Literally exhausting.

  2. Richard Kopf

    Scott,

    After sentencing both women and men for drug crimes over the last 25 years I confess to frequently sentencing women less harshly than men in those types of cases. Why?

    For reasons I don’t understand, women caught up in the drug trade frequently lack a meaningful sense of self. In that respect, there is a stark difference between male and female offenders. As a class, women are, or so I think, (1) more easily and quickly addicted than men; (2) relatively incapable of independent thought and (3) child-like in their need for approval from their male co-defendants.

    Where I cut women drug offenders a big break is under Rule 35b after they have ratted out their male counterparts. That act of self-preservation, while not unique to women in and of itself, is often the first time those women have stood up for themselves–not so for most men.

    Now, to be clear, I also believe that sending these women to prison is frequently necessary. Indeed, in my experience, relatively short prison terms can more often than you might imagine start real change. As a result, I strongly disagree with Professor Bagaric , at least in the types of cases that I see. The women I see in the drug cases I see are real criminals who commit serious crimes and just desserts deserts [Ed. Note: It’s a friggin’ typo, you covfefes. Chill out.] alone demand real punishment for them.

    In sum, it is my opinion, based solely on my experience and without data, that the causative nature of female drug crime is frequently different than the causative nature of male drug crime. Those differences are relevant to the goals of sentencing and warrant, in my opinion, differential sentencing. But that certainly does not mean that women as a class of drug offenders are entitled to a no-prison presumption.

    All the best.

    RGK

      1. John Barleycorn

        Damn!

        Put down the spoons because if that there comment and retort doesn’t bringith the “juicy” by the barrelfull, I don’t know If I will ever be able to eat grapefruit again, sugar or not!

        You two hatching some extra holindaise on your eggs benedict greenroom plans with that sort of saucy sunday morning material or what?

    1. Ross

      Judge Kopf, that seems eminently reasonable to this non-attorney tax payer. I wish you had more flexibility in the sentencing, as was so eloquently expressed by Judge Bennett in the excellent article on cnn.com yesterday. I also wish we had more judges that think like you. The results would likely be better outcomes, with lower costs.

      As for “no female offender should be imprisoned”, that’s a remarkably stupid premise, given the number of women who commit property crimes, thefts, etc that need some sort of incarceration to break the mindset that they didn’t do anything very wrong, especially for repeated offenses.

    2. John Neff

      The US male incarceration rate increased about eight years earlier than the female rate. That makes me think there was either a policy change or a staff change where there were more female attorneys and judges about the same time.

    3. Keith

      …’just desserts’ alone demand real punishment for them
      While not as serious an error as trafficking in drugs, every sentence should fit the crime, Judge.

      Until David is back, the Rawls in your Court for spelling.

      1. Richard Kopf

        Keith, I hate speeling. Our mean ass host could have saved me the embarrassment by correcting my post from behind his magic wall. He didn’t. I suspect you may have had a hand in it to.

        All the best.

        RGK

        1. SHG Post author

          I was on my way out the door to a car show, Judge. I would have corrected it if I caught it, but I read quickly and rushed off, leaving the errant “s” in my wake. Mea culpa, though Keith is really being mean about it.

          And where is David?

          1. Richard Kopf

            Scott,

            I was kidding. It is my job to write properly.

            I hope you enjoyed the car show. Back in the day, my Dad and his brother had a Chevy dealership. Once he took me to the unveiling of the new models in Detroit, only about 60 miles to the north of us. You had to have hard-to-get tickets to get in. It was more like a stage show than a car show. It was the highlight of my young life.

            All the best.

            RGK

            PS. I suspect Keith frightens small children when he is bored. I like doing that too, but don’t tell anyone.

    4. NickM

      Ease and quickness of addiction is likely true biologically. Smaller person, same dose, greater effect. The same thing happens with alcohol.

      1. SHG Post author

        Excess dosage isn’t the same as ease and quickness of addiction for females. Should there be shorter sentences for shorter men? Well, yes, but not because they’re short.

        1. NickM

          It’s not the same, but they are connected. There also appear to be plenty of other hormonal and metabolic connections, though some are only applicable to pre-menopausal women, not women generally.
          And short people – well, Randy Newman had it right. 🙂

    5. Richard Kopf

      Scott, I love desserts and just desserts. One eats the rest to enjoy the latter. The only exception is bacon.

      All the best.

      RGK

      1. SHG Post author

        I’m a Brussels sprouts kind guy. Cook with chunks of bacon. Or just bacon.

        Dessert is good too.

  3. Jim Tyre

    Bagaric is an Aussie, who (since there’s a thing today about typos) deliberately spells “offenses” as “offences”. He may talk about the U.S., but can he really be trusted?

    1. Patrick Maupin

      Offense or offence?
      Tyre’s not on the fence,
      but tied to the tree.
      Though he wants to be free,
      he’s but a child’s swing hence.

      1. SHG Post author

        I had regrets about posting Tyre’s comment. I now realize that I made a heinous mistake. No woman would have been so wrong.

  4. rxc

    Once they establish that women should not be punished for crimes, maybe every man accused of a crime should pull a Chelsea Manning, and declare that they really identify as a woman.

    1. SHG Post author

      The irony here is that there is no room in Balgaric’s gender characterizations for Chelsea Manning.

  5. Allen

    “Women almost never scare us.” He needs to get out more, Hell hath no fury and such.

  6. Paul

    1. Imprisonment and conviction stats showing racial differences reflect bias in the system.
    2. Imprisonment and conviction stats showing gender differences are true and must be trusted.

    Hmmm.

    1. SHG Post author

      No reason to question numbers that serve your purposes. On the other hand, there’s no basis to conclude they’re wrong and women criminals are under-represented because of anti-male prejudice.

  7. David Meyer-Lindenberg

    I was pals with a Mirko in high school. He was a great but very reckless driver, and he used to pull stunts in his old VW van that’d have made his mother, had she known, consider signing up with the nearest nunnery.

    As for this Mirko, he seems like a lot less fun. For instance, when you Google him, up pops this amusing Aussie article from back in ’05 where he advocates the torture of innocents – and doesn’t even have the decency to come up with a good argument.

    1. Patrick Maupin

      I guess Mirko’s solution to the trolley problem would be to tie enough innocent people to the track to slow the train down.

      1. SHG Post author

        Throw the switch to let the trolley strike the ten men rather than one women was too obvious?

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