Our thanks to a number of regular contributors for pointing us to this story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2594460/Young-mother-benefits-went-designer-spending-spree-52-000-just-hours-council-accidentally-credited-account-escaped-jail.html

There are about 80,000 men in British prisons, and just 4,000 women. The government plans to move the vast majority of those women (the non-violent ones) to rehabilitation centres near their homes, so they can spend their evenings and nights with their families. The prisons they’ve left will then house another 4,000 men.

When you read stories like this one, you can only wonder there are as many as 4,000 women in British prisons. Women have to do something quite extraordinary to be jailed, unlike men. In this case, as in so many cases, the woman is presented unaccountable for her actions, as her boyfriend ‘influenced’ her. Yeah, right. The paper should have run this ironic headline:

Woman, 23, forced by her boyfriend to buy designer clothes, shoes, jeans, sunglasses and other luxuries.

As a single mother, the likelihood of a custodial sentence was close to zero. Do women mysteriously forget they’re mothers when they commit crimes? And if they don’t, but commit those crimes anyway, why should the fact they’re mothers have the slightest bearing on the likelihood – or duration – of a custodial sentence?

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