Decarcerative policy. Soft on crime?

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: 1,7, Swansea University (College of Law), course: Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice, language: English, abstract: When it comes to sentencing offenders, the general public is quick to demand the highest possible sentencing available, and tends to focus on retaliation and public security rather than resettlement. Prison sentences are seen as the default solution for all kinds of offenders, and prison is often considered a place which best addresses the needs of both offenders and the general population. Yet, prisons are overcrowded, expensive and proven to produce high reoffending rates – and they are definitely not the best option everyone. Alternative models, such as community sentences, on the other hand, have a reputation of being too ‘soft’ on criminals, i.e. not meeting the public’s expectations in terms of punitiveness, and its effectiveness is often doubted. Rather than interpreting ‘soft on crime’ in the sense of public perception, I will relate this to its effectiveness in terms of reoffending rates. In the following I would thus like to analyse in how far a decarcerative policy in respect of female offenders might help address the special needs of female offenders better and, thus, help stop them from reoffending. I will first focus on them make-up of the women’s prison population, then turn to the situation of women in prison in order to tie this in with reoffending rates, and finally point out some ways to improve the current situation.