Because You Should Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste...

...and the crisis in the public spending deficit can be put to good use by the 'Oh, please don't be beastly to poor womanhood by locking them up!' crowd, as represented here by Yvonne Roberts:

Aware of the shrinking public purse and the £4bn prison-building programme, prison governors are calling on the government to invest in community orders as a way of saving money and cutting reoffending.

And in the spirit of feminism and modern attitudes to the sexes and equality, she calls on this to be gender neutral so as to...

Oh, what am I saying:

As happens too often, any discussion around penal reform acts as if it's gender neutral, while actually focusing on the male prison estate and overlooking what happens to women. Three years ago, a government-commissioned review on female offenders – the Corston report – tried to rectify this. It bravely suggested that prison should be abolished for all but a tiny minority of female prisoners who present a threat to the public or who have committed exceptionally serious crimes.

So all the shoplifters and violent attackers and fraudsters and habitual druggies and drunks, you get a get out of jail free card! You can make your neighbours/families/friends lives hell, because you get the pussy pass!

Aren't we progressive?

Corston made over 40 recommendations underlining the need for a greater awareness of the differences in the way men and women offend and the causes; community-based punishments outside of jail; geographically dispersed, small, multifunctional custodial centres phased in over 10 years and – crucially – much more intensive holistic support to put a break on female recidivism.

Apparantly, this load of old flannel is because offendors have rotten childhoods. She might as well just sing 'Gee Officer Krupke!' and be done with it...

"Vulnerable women who are not a danger to society should not be going to prison," Home Office minister Baroness Scotland said at the time.

Baroness Scotland, eh? That name rings a be...

Oh. Right.

I expect she was thinking of her own future when she said that...