Our thanks to PL for this. Excerpts:

Holloway Prison is to close, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said this afternoon. Mr Osborne announced the women’s prison, in Parkhurst Road, will shut in his spending review and autumn statement. Though he wasn’t specific about the Holloway site, he appeared to suggest the building will make way for housing.

Mr Osborne said: “I can tell the House that Holloway Prison, the biggest women’s jail in western Europe, will close. In the future, women prisoners will serve their sentences in more humane conditions, better designed to keep them away from crime.”

Hmm, could George not apply the same logic to 95% of prisoners, close Wormwood Scrubs, and announce this?

In the future, men prisoners will serve their sentences in more humane conditions, better designed to keep them away from crime.

This would seem as good a time as any to post yet again the piece by William Collins, in which he showed that if male criminals were sentenced with the same leniency as female criminals, five out of six men in British prisons wouldn’t be there. Gender equality would solve the perennial prison overcrowding crisis, and save vast sums of money. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should be interested in this, but we have to assume he’s as disinterested as Michael Gove, Justice Secretary, proved to be, when we wrote to him.