As the proportion of crimes committed by women continues to rise, feminists have stepped in to maintain the huge gender disparity in prison. Dame Laura Cox, a British High Court Judge, commanded her inferiors – Britain’s judges – to treat female criminals leniently when handing out sentences. It is not clear whether keeping female criminals out of prison is her only goal — reducing punishments is usually a way to give a sort of tacit approval to acts, in this case crimes committed by women.
The reasoning behind the commandment goes something like this:
Women’s experiences are not exactly equal to men’s, therefore in order to have true equality, we have to treat them unequally under the law, because that way they will have equal experiences.
So, she’s essentially saying that legal equality is not really equal, possibly because it doesn’t “feel that way” to female criminals, never mind the fact that most convicted criminals – male or female – feel like they got a raw deal.
When the concept of equality extends to mandating equal outcomes based on subjective feelings, and power is handed over to women who actually believe this is a form of justice, there is bound to be an erosion of the very concept of justice in the popular mind. What happens is that a more primitive, selfish attitude toward crime and punishment emerges as collective justice is no longer seen as justice at all.
When the courts begin to fail, one should expect more vendettas, vigilanteism, and personal violence in the name of justice, in which case women will likely be in for a rough ride.
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