We all know the prison population is overwhelmingly male. There are now twenty men in prison, for every one woman. And whilst some will point to this with explanations that men are twenty times more violent, or commit crimes at twenty times the rate as women, the facts don’t bear out this way. So if men commit crimes at three to four times the rate as women, then why are they imprisoned at *twenty times* the rate? If one hundred years ago, there were five male prisoners for every one female, then why has this increased to twenty to one? Have men somehow become 300% more criminal in this time? Or is there something else going on? The unpopular questions to ask are: do we sentence men more harshly for the same crime? Do we more often see them as guilty? Do we let women out of prison sooner? And if so, why? Of course, we cannot have this conversation without also talking about race. As these are all problems that doubly impact black men, and we readily (and rightly) tackle this as a racial issue. But what about the ‘men’ of ‘black men’, why are we so afraid to ask the same questions here? Do men, and particularly black men, experience systemic prejudice within the judicial system? And can this, in part, explain the incredible gender/racial disparity we see behind the bars of our prison system? ~ Source MOJ report  Images by Gradienta from Unsplash. #criminology #sexism #racism #incarceration

2023-02-04