I found interesting the recent comments of John Lonergan, the governor of Mountjoy prison, about the fact that the State's female prison population has recently gravitated around the 100 mark, five times the level of 20 years ago. He speculated that the increase might be "connected into feelings of isolation and loneliness and being totally disconnected to mainstream society".
I have written before that Mr Lonergan is so decent a man that if or when I finish up behind bars, I hope he will be there to direct me to my cell. He has many times rightly drawn attention to the connection between deprivation or social alienation and crime. But here, I think, he may be missing something.
Is it not possible that the increase in the number of women prisoners is a symptom of an increase in what is termed "equality"? After all, women have made enormous strides in other areas of public activity, so why should it be surprising if they are catching up here as well? A lot of prisoners might argue that their incarceration is "connected into feelings of isolation and loneliness and being totally disconnected to mainstream society".
However, the duly-appointed authorities would in many instances point to evidence of wrongdoing and the verdicts of courts of law. Most women who end up in jail, like most men who end up in jail, have broken the law. The interesting questions relate to whether the respective representation of the genders behind bars relates to real differences in the behaviour of men and women, or to the prejudices of those who put them there.
THERE is in this State a paucity of research into gender-based criminality. In Britain, however, the recent (1997) Home Office Research Study 170, Understanding the Sentencing of Women, throws light on why men are more likely than women to end up in prison. This study, which exhibited the usual attempts in such research to deny any suggestion of deliberate discrimination, was two-tiered. The first part dealt with the patterns of sentencing; the second with the rationalisations of nearly 200 of the magistrates creating these patterns.
For virtually every kind of offence, women were found to be treated much more leniently than men. Men were in general nearly three times as likely as women to be sent to prison. For offences like shoplifting, a man was about eight times as likely to be sentenced to prison as a woman. This ratio shrank to about 5:2 in respect of subsequent such offences. For violent offences, the male/female ratio for custodial sentences in respect of a first offence was 3:2, increasing to 5:2 for subsequent offences. The most even-handed sentencing was found to be in relation to drug offences, where the male/female ratio was about 4:3.
The overall response of the magistrates revealed deep-set gender-based prejudices. Most distinguished between "troubled" and "troublesome" offenders, tending to put most women in the former category. Magistrates were more likely to consider the motivation of female defendants in a sympathetic way - many confessing to a belief that women stole or defrauded the State to feed their children, whereas men did it for "selfish" reasons. Some magistrates were found to apply this "principle" even to women who had no children, although men rarely obtained sympathy because of being fathers.
A BIG factor was the demeanour and body language of the defendant in court, with tears or demonstrations of contrition being more likely to obtain sympathy for women. "Generally," the report stated, "female defendants were perceived to be deferential and respectful. They were not only more likely to cry than men, but they were widely perceived to be less threatening in their behaviour and appearance, and so more deserving of compassion". If a man and a woman were charged together, many magistrates said they would be likely to see the man as the ringleader and the woman as his victim.
Some of the quotations from magistrates are fascinating and disturbing in what they tell us about the calibre of those with power to withdraw, at the stroke of a pen, the liberty of both men and women:
"You really wonder how the innocent-looking young lady in front of you, who's obviously been told by her solicitor to look as helpless as possible, could possibly have undertaken the violent elements that are there."
"You can easily be swayed into believing a woman is really contrite."
"We don't really maintain objectivity as much as perhaps we should."
"You know there are certain types of people that appeal to you and certain types that don't. I have a particular problem with tattoos. I have this home-spun theory that tattoos and crime go hand in hand. I mean, I would say that 90 per cent of the defendants that we see have a visible tattoo. I don't know what it is - it's something they put in the dye or what, but - and usually the worse the tattoos the more I think, `Oh, no...'."
Enlightenment comes dropping slow. Recently, a couple of Irish judges have observed, to the shrill response of the feminist ayatollahs, that in their experience women, as well as men, are sometimes guilty of wrongdoing. Perhaps the increase in female prisoners is connected to such an awakening? Or perhaps we need to think more about tattoos.
jwaters@irish-times.ie