NZ | Aotearoa: Over-incarceration of women – 6.25% average not as bad as 7.25% female imprisonment rate of Australia but still 2/3s higher than UK at ~4%.
That sex-differential in the makeup of prison population is not only a numerical difference in prison populations of a historically and globally consistent 5% | 95%. That sex-differential must include the understanding that male criminality is predominately violent offending and female ‘criminality’ is primarily economic and often consequent to male violence committed against them, which means that the female prison population is more seriously offended against than offending.
In New Zealand / Aotearoa, the Department of Corrections within the Ministry of Justice records the prison population data (latest release March 2022). Figure 1 shows that, while the New Zealand female prison population average of 6.25% is lower than the 7.25% of the Australian penal system [LINK], it is considerably higher than the 4% of that of the prison system of England and Wales.
While the original stimulus for (27 Aug 2022) Australia: Over-Incarceration of Women confirmed – comparison of detailed Govt Statistics [LINK] was the 2018 academic paper “the over-incarceration of women” in Australia by Anna Kerr (Principal Solicitor at the Feminist Legal Clinic NSW) & Professor Rita Shackel (University of Sydney Law School), it seemed a pity not to take in the relatively simple ‘spreados’ (Excel spreadsheets) of the Department of Corrections within the NZ | Aotearoa Ministry of Justice too.
[W]hen anyone thinks about biological sex, they default to a 50:50 position unless it is made explicit that 50:50 does not apply, which it definitely doesn’t in the 5% : 95% ‘rule of thumb’/ default we should be using for prison population.
Thus, lawyers, advocates & campaigning organisations have to work against the fact that unwittingly undoubtedly conscientious statisticians, defying all mathematical reason have male norm-referenced the immediately accessible statistics such that they reflect male ‘criminality’ and conceal the very different female ‘criminality’. Indeed, male ‘criminality’ and female ‘criminality’ are so different that they almost need a completely different word to describe them.
There is a constant need for all commentators such as Kerr and Shackel (July/Aug 2018) to reiterate that “Prison populations have always reflected an unpleasant truth – that men commit the overwhelming majority of crime,” because it is the one over-arching reality that statisticians of the Anglophone nations leave out.