Former Prisons minister and Reform UK spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe has said the policy of reducing the number of female prisoners could lead to more women being embroiled in crime.
Speaking on GB News, Ann Widdecombe said: “One can’t say [mistaken early release of 37 prisoners has put the country in danger] for a certainty, because the devil lies in the details of who’s been released? How close were they to release anyway? Were they guilty of serious crime or repetitive serious crime?
“I can’t answer that. You can’t answer that. The government can and should answer that. And I think what we’ve got here is very clearly an error, and I don’t think it’s enough to blame computers. Somebody somewhere sanctioned it, and that needs to be fully disclosed.
“I’m concerned about [the five missing prisoners] because I assume, perhaps naively, that as a condition of release, the prison service would have to know where you were and how to locate you.
“How do they receive tags if we don’t know where they are? Presumably they’re among those who haven’t been tagged and who should have been.
“So it’s been an awfully messy implementation of a hastily conceived policy to meet a situation of the government’s own making, which was the very tough sentences, which I don’t disagree with in principle, very tough sentences of the rioters.
“But it all flows from that. And they do have a duty. They’re in government now, not opposition – they do have a duty to make sure that the rest of us are kept safe.
“First of all, if a woman has committed a crime so serious that the courts think she should be sent to prison, it’s the duty of the government to find the places, not to second guess the court. That’s the first thing.
“But the second thing is, I wonder if she’s thought this through. If we get into the habit of believing that if you’re a woman, you won’t be sent to prison if you commit a crime, men will take advantage of that, and they’ll ask women to do the dirty work.
“They will say, ‘you won’t go to prison’ and it will actually embroil women in crime.
“I don’t think she’s thought it through, but I think in principle we are all equal, and it should be down to the courts to determine whether there should be a prison sentence or not. Not some policy which says if you’re one sex rather than the other, we’re going to treat you more gently. That is quite wrong.”
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