It’s been a fascinating exchange between Ally Fogg and William Collins concerning the gender gap in sentencing criminals to prison sentences. We’ll leave the last word to Ally Fogg, noting some interesting comments including #3 from William Collins and in particular #4 from Herbert Purdy.
I have no problem with Ally Fogg trying to refine the analysis to down play the absolute ratio of men to women that may have been more severely dealt with by the Justice System. But he fails in any substantial way to undermine the findings of William Collins. Since William seems to be the only one trying to do this analysis in the UK is significant. Why is the Home Office not doing the same thing as a matter of normal practice? These are official statistics, not fabricated ones, Just because the official stats are inadequate, neglectfully so, in giving a full break down of the severity of offences by gender does not support Ally’s presumption as a percentage that men always commit the worse crimes in each category. He must do better than presumption, he should seek a source of stats to back it up. Until then he must take the stats at face value, as far as they go. He certainly can not dismiss them on some societal gut feeling. To say this analysis has been done by an amateur is disingenuous when he himself is not an expert on statistics, but also makes a living out of using them. Einstein was an amateur and look what he managed to do with statistics.
The raw stats are admittedly limited but useful, and cannot be disputed as made up. If we can use “received wisdom” like Ally does, then we can also probably agree that with the current laws and societal attitudes, men are going to be charged with more crimes, but this is not the same as they are more likely to commit more crime. Laws are being written and arresting policies defined to only target men. Very many women are allowed by law, not to go to prison due to just being a mother. Men have no father free card. Becoming pregnant is a get of jail card too. Women have more state funded safety nets, more resources spend on them, and compassion shown for their problems. They are commonly considered to lack agency even when they admit the outcome of their criminal actions. Fathers have to seek work no matter what the child’s age, women have not such worries until all their children are at primary school age. Males from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to fall into crime due to these requirements to self provide, or to protect or provide more for the family, even when estranged by family courts unfairly. They are increasingly being disproportionately let down by the education system and affected by quotas in job applications and degree courses. So the pressure on them to commit crime is greater. If men do not commit crime, men are more likely to be on the streets, or to kill themselves, because society just does not seem to care. So for some men prison is seen as a step up in their lives.
Until better official statistics are available Mike Buchanan can legitimately claim the analysis by William Collins is a fair attempt to quantify the current knowable state of our Justice System on this matter. He does not hide his source or make it hard to find. Where are the counter statistics? Ally has certainly not produced any hard ones to dislodge them. I am sure Mike will only be too happy to have better stats considered when and if they become available.
it is small wonder that nearly all prisoners are male,when every man is portrayed as rapist and every prostitute as an innocent,ignorant and trafficked victim. In reality it is mostly the other way round!
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