ABSTRACT
The ‘Alternatives to Custody’ debate has been constructed within probation discourse in such a way as to ensure that it both ignores and is irrelevant to female law-breakers. This is not because women are not sent to prison; clearly they are-and in increasing numbers (Home Office 1986a). But the current debate ignores the complexity of the route that leads them there. It does this in two ways. First, it renders the majority of female law-breakers invisible by constructing them as ‘not recidivists’. Second, it renders a minority of female law-breakers highly visible by assuming that their presence in prison demonstrates either their dangerousness or their incorrigibility, rather than demonstrating the inadequacy of the discourses within which they are so constructed. This study demonstrates that increasing numbers of female law-breakers are trapped by a judicial need to fit them into one or other of these categories.
