UK: Prison for girls is not the answer

Article here. Excerpt:

'Generally speaking, girls are much better behaved than boys. That isn’t some ludicrous Victorian stereotype, but a fact drawn out by crime statistics. Of 1,744 young people in custody, just 95 are girls. Just 22 per cent of offences committed by children are committed by girls. Moreover, of the few girls that do end up in court, the majority have committed low level, non-violent offences such as shop theft or criminal damage.

This has two significant consequences: it creates a youth criminal justice system built with boys in mind and it very often means that, for those girls who have ended up caught up in lives of crime, something must have gone very wrong.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System, chaired by Baroness Corston has conducted an inquiry on girls and found that girls were being criminalised inappropriately by the courts when it would have made far more sense to deal with the girl’s issues, in terms of her welfare and behaviour, long before they reached the courtroom.

Using inappropriate and unnecessary criminal justice interventions for girls’ low level behaviour is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The criminal justice system should focus time and resources on those who have committed serious violent offences, not on the mentally unwell and sexually exploited girl who has stolen a lipstick from the local supermarket for the first time.'