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Leaving aside the wisdom (or lack thereof) of this plan, this isn't what is going on.
There are no plans to get rid of women's prison. There's a plan to get rid of a women's prison. Women are not too good to spend time in prison for their crimes:
Would they, if they looked at the men's prisons, find many of the same reasons for leniency apply? Probably (it seems the overall rate of people in prison for nonviolent offenses is 61%), and they obviously don't because women are wonderful and men aren't. But your hyperbolic framing of what's going on is just that.
Yeah Timpson is a notable prison reform advocate who famously (or infamously) thinks 2/3rds of all prisoners should not be in prison. He's talking about women here because the prison in question is a woman's prison, but he has said exactly the same thing about the prison population in general (which is like 90% male). The only difference is that women prisoners who are mothers usually means the state is paying to jail the woman and then pay to put her kids in foster care etc.
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