‘Petty’ criminals

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33941, 6 September 1975, Page 6

‘Petty’ criminals

f.X.Z. Press Assn— Copyright) CANBERRA. Ninety-five per cent of women in prisons had committed petty or victimless crimes, a community worker from Melbourne told the Women and Politics conference in Canberra. Ms Vivien Altman, who is also a member of the Prisoners’ Action Group, said these women were given short sentences, but were caught in the “revolving door syndrome.” “They are picked up again, and each time the sentences get longer,” she said. “Many of the women were institutionalised. As young girls they’d been picked for offences that can be as trivial as truancy, or as trumped up as ‘being exposed to moral danger.’

“They were sent to girls’| homes and automatically' examined for V.D. and preg-i nancy. “The question of their j rights hardly, if at all, came! into it. Women in prison suffered! possibly more than men. j Ms Altman told the forum about Maria, a woman kept in solitary for eight months. She was pregnant, was put into hospital for three days for the birth and then went back to solitary confinement. The other way prison authorities deal with the rebellious is to strip them of their “privileges.” A participant who had been a prisoner at Fairlie women’s prison- in Melbourne said that at Fairlie, women prisoners were allowed to see their children] once a month. This visit was classed as aj privilege and cancelled if I women were considered to) have “misbehaved.” ;