Today's Ponderful Thought

Women, Abuse and Crime...How To Stop the Cycle!

I cannot recall even a single case in my lifetime wherein a woman was charged with a crime and didn't claim innocence based on having been coerced, threatened or abused by a man, at some point in her life, causing her not to be able to discern right (or lawful) action from wrong. (And if her claim is that a woman abused her, that woman will most certainly report that she only perpetrated the abuse at the bidding, or under the influence, of a man.) The cycle is most vicious!

Since it is so widely held that women are, from birth, wholly incapable of internally or externally accepting any responsibility for their actions, isn't it terribly cruel that we send them to prisons just like ones we send men to? Isn't that the height of gender inequity, the equivalent of punishing mentally incapacitated people - which amounts to outright cruelty?

Obviously, men who make such claims of abuse are just opportunists trying to avoid punishment for their crimes, but women really are helpless, hapless, victims of not only men, but the abusive court system that punishes them for what men make them do.

With more careful scrutiny of young men, I believe we can get to a point where women are free from this double-abuse system of injustice. If we could identify those males who display any sort of magnetism or influence over female children and/or female adults around them, by four years of age, we could institutionalize them right away and thereby allow people to live freely, and safely, in society.

Men will undoubtedly balk at the suggestion that they should be imprisoned prior to actually causing a woman to commit a crime, but if we really want to eradicate violence in our society it is quite clear that this is the answer to the problem. It will, in fact, save a lot of men's lives, making it in their best interest that we take this fresh approach. Just like in the war on drugs, it is ineffectual to do anything but destroy the source of the evil, and in this case, as with the drug war, the evil source is clearly men.

For over two decades the US has tried to fix the problem by putting the burden of reform on the victims of these men, thinking that they would somehow rise up and fight against men's evil influence, all the while knowing that women are not, by their very nature, mentally or emotionally sophisticated enough to fight such a thing. Pure silliness!

Now it is time to address the source of the problem - the evil and influential men who will, if left to come of age in freedom as they do now, corrupt these innately innocent, helpless, paragons of purity and beauty. Women's prisons are a blatant sign that the US Criminal Justice System is in dire need of reform. We must stop blaming victims and take a tougher stance on crime prevention!

A Little Proof for the Pudding...
http://www.schr.org/prisonsjails/news/Tutwiler/news_tutwiler35bham.htm
"Convicts serving time for violent crimes have lower recidivism rates than property and drug offenders, said Cynthia Dillard, assistant executive director of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole. "Especially the homicides, especially females. They usually kill or hurt their significant other. When that person is out of the way, their perceived problem is out of the way.""

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frances_crook/2006/08/close_down_womens_prisons.html
"The Howard League for Penal Reform, of which I am director, today launches a new Prison Information Bulletin (pdf) on women and girls in the penal system, calling on the government to start a programme of closures of women's prisons, and a transfer of resources to community programmes and treatment facilities that tackle women's needs and reduce re-offending."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040412/tuhusdubrow
"Who are these female convicts? Outside of Quentin Tarantino films, women who set out to go on bloody rampages are exceedingly rare. The far more typical female inmate is an addict who starts using drugs to deal with the trauma of childhood abuse and turns a few tricks to support her habit. Or the pawn who unwittingly gets caught serving as a "mule" in a drug deal. Or the abused partner who fires the household gun in desperation in a final fight. Indeed, female convicts across the board report alarming rates of abuse: in 1999, the federal government found that close to sixty percent of all women in state prisons nationwide suffered abusive histories."