For some years I’ve tried to catch Channel 4 News at 7pm every weekday evening, but I’m going to stop watching it. Almost every evening, usually in the second half of the programme, there’s a feminist propaganda piece, often one that would make even BBC programme makers blush with shame.
This evening’s edition included a particularly woeful example, The crisis in women’s prisons (4:06). It will be available to view for seven days, we’re not going to save it for posterity. Jon Snow, the ultimate mangina newsreader, started the piece with this:
We already know that prisons are in crisis, but for women behind bars, the situation is dire. Last year 12 women took their own lives, a record high.
You could be forgiven for assuming, after watching the piece, that no men committed suicide in British prisons last year.
The last substantive piece we did on prison suicides was last November – here. Some of the piece related to the scandal that is the Howard League for Penal Reform, led by CEO Frances Crook. The organization is clearly far more concerned about the 4,000 female prisoners than the 80,000+ male prisoners. We presented data showing that of the 102 ‘people’ who committed suicide in British prisons between 1 January and 28 November last year, 92 were men.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Simon Israel ‘Senior Home Affairs Correspondent’ for C4 is tagged as the culprit for this piece on C4 web page. Is Jon Snow anything more than a puppet/presenter, reporting what he is told to report by the likes of Mr Israel?
It seems that in this instance women are in fact more than twice as likely to suicide by the above figures 80,000 divided by 4000 = 20 and therefore 12 women would account for 240 dead men divided by 92 approximately 2.6 times.
The BBC says 80,000 UK prisoners 5.5% of which are women, so that would mean 4400 women 75,600 men and that would bring the figures to approximately male population being 17.18 times the female and therefore 12 women would equate to 206 male suicides so a little over 2.2 times more women killing themselves.
Please someone correct me if I’m wrong.
I wonder if male suicides would go down if male prisoners were also allowed to wear casuals and have other liberties in prison that women usually have and men don’t.
I try to remember not to say “commit” suicide because I find the idea of arresting someone or charging him or her for trying to kill themselves, barbaric.
The figures should always be more or less irrelevant, the morally correct thing to do, as our good friend Philip Davies would no doubt say would be to forget the gender and deal with the issue of prison suicide [and all issues] from an unbiased gender standpoint.
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To my mind your analysis points to the greater resilience of men, and the ridiculously high proportion of prisoners who are male, which leads to 90% of suicide victime being male. The female interviewee raised issues of mental health issues, poor education etc. which all apply equally to men. I repeat the point that the Howard League for Penal Reform, with a female CE O and overwhelmingly female staff, seems more bothered by 4,000 women than 80,000+ men.
On the broader front, outside prison, most suicide victims are male because far more men than women suffer the major life events that lead to reactive depression, as I outlined in an article for the International Business Times http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/male-suicide-scandal-uk-men-are-paying-system-that-drives-thousands-them-death-1493340.
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Thank you Mike, …I really must check these responses more regularly. I hope this message finds you well and happy. Sorry to see your J4MB website is experiencing issues. Blogger does have the occasional glitch, but seems slightly more stable. Best wishes.
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I’m not going to watch the clip but I’m confident the crisis won’t be that there are too few women for the places in women’s prisons.
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