The sexism in our prisons the government is happy to ignore

There is one form of female under-representation which no-one seems concerned about – the fact that a mere 4.5 per cent of the prison population is made up of women. No one says we must rebalance that so as to make it 50-50 by 2025, or whatever. It just seems to be accepted that men are more prone to greed, lust and violence, and that greater numbers of them deserve to be behind bars. I guess that is right. If we have 20 times more male offenders than female ones, then I want the prison population to reflect that.

But why the need to readjust the criminal justice system in order to try to exaggerate the gender imbalance in our jails even further? This morning, Justice Secretary David Gauke was on the Today programme explaining why the government had decided to abandon plans to build extra women’s prisons and would instead built ‘residential centres’ where female offenders would serve community sentences.