15. A sensible approach...or just reverse gender discrimination?

'Purgatory' by D2 Photography, licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

I have just read a rather disturbing article on the BBC News site.

In it, British Justice Secretary Jack Straw (an idiot, in my humble opinion) argues that male offenders should be punished 'more harshly', whereas female ones should be rehabilitated and reintegrated into the community. This is based on the very 'scientific' statement that 'male prisoners are very different to female ones.'

Uhhh, how?!

The article mentions that many women offend because of issues of low self-esteem and a lack of self-respect. I would argue that the exact same things can lead men to offend. Isn't that what Jackson Katz was arguing in Tough Guise? Certainly people with healthy self-esteem would not become child abusers, would they, whether male or female? The article mentions that since women are usually the primary caregivers, it would be wrong to incarcerate mothers. But don't children need the love and support of both parents? We should not assume that children do not suffer when their fathers are sent away. In the summer when I was in America, I watched a news programme about a charity that works with African-American children whose fathers are imprisoned. It was difficult to see the suffering that entailed.

One of the reasons for the explosive growth of the prison industry in the UK and especially in the USA is a lack of commitment to true rehabilitation and an overemphasis on (often mediaeval) forms of 'punishment'. So advocating support for one sex over the other just seems to be blatantly discriminatory; all offenders should be given the requisite support.

* By the way, if you're interested in these issues, I HIGHLY recommend the book Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor. Shocking and mind-blowing don't even begin to describe it...