We’ve been submitting Freedom of Information requests to various government departments, as part of our work developing the election manifesto. Yesterday we received this response to a FoI request we sent to the Ministry of Justice. Parts have been redacted by us because they’re not relevant to the issue being covered here, and we’ve emphasised some key points by highlighting them in yellow.
Primary legislation is seldom created with pro-female and anti-male biases. That would be too obvious. In the case of the ‘justice’ system the biases are introduced in a number of ways, including:
1. Not charging women with crimes, when it’s deemed not in the ‘public interest’. Not one British woman has ever been convicted of paternity fraud.
2. The inclination of (mostly male) judges and magistrates to exercise their discretion and show inappropriate leniency towards women, often to the point of not punishing them at all, as we’ve reported in numerous cases on this blog. A small example – a barmaid convicted of stealing £3,000 from her employer was ‘punished’ by being required to pay back just £500.
3. Women with ‘primary carer status’ – with respect to children and/or others – are treated particularly leniently. Instead of being given custodial sentences, they’re typically given suspended sentences, which are no punishment at all. This saves the state from funding alternative accommodation and care for their children and/or others, which could otherwise be very costly – quite apart from the cost of funding prison places for all these women. Whatever else this is, it isn’t justice, and it explains in part why 95% of prisoners in the UK are male.
