ABSTRACT
For those who see justice and equality as identical, the issue of whether or not too many women are sent to prison is readily resolved by examining whether they are imprisoned in similar proportions to men, or for similar reasons. If the similarity test is satisfied, then that seems to be acceptable. [See also Worrall, chapter 3. Ed.] The origins of the groupwork programme for women offenders, established in the United Kingdom by the Hereford and Worcester Probation Service (now the West Mercia Area) in 1993, lay, in part, in similarly shallow ideas about there being ‘too many’ women on the service caseload.
