Female criminals: 'A new breed of drunk women are as bad as men'

Published on Wednesday 30 April 2008 10:17

THE crime figures obtained by the Evening News today clearly show that the worrying rise in antisocial behaviour spans the gender divide and that the new breed of intoxicated young women is capable of causing trouble every bit as much as stereotyped drunken young men.

It is a sign of the times that an average of six women in the Lothians are charged each day with breach of the peace and around five a week for assault. And with drugs and drink often fuelling unacceptable behaviour it is not surprising that two women a week are charged with child neglect.

As concern grows over Scotland's soaring female prison population it would be easy to blame the apparent rise in the numbers behind bars on the slowly growing number of serious crimes involving women, but this is not necessarily so.

Recent studies of Scotland's only female prison, at Cornton Vale, indicate that only one fifth of the current population is serving time for what can be classified as serious crimes. The remainder have been incarcerated largely for what can be classed as minor offences, such as serial shoplifting and defaulting on fines.

Clive Fairweather, former chief inspector of prisons, has gone as far to say that growing numbers with severe personal problems have been locked up almost for their own protection as the support services on the outside are inadequate to support them. It is no coincidence that 94 per cent of those arriving at Cornton Vale have a serious drink or drug habit and the ready availability of narcotics in jail only helps maintain their addictions while inside.

But for whatever reason more women are being locked up, the facts speak for themselves. Since 1998 the number of prisoners at Cornton Vale has more than doubled from 180 to almost 400. The sharp rise led to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill describing the increase as Scotland's "national shame".

The SNP administration, like its predecessor, has talked about introducing more community-based punishments and tagging in order to help reduce the corrosive effects of prison overcrowding and the incidence of re-offending. But prison reformers like the Howard League warn this will be ineffective if community support for tackling a wide variety of underlying problems is not made more readily available.

But what is clear is that females committing criminal acts cannot expect allowances to be made for their gender and the law is being applied to them as rigorously as males.