WOMEN prisoners soared in number by 198 per cent in the past decade, yet only a handful of women have made it to the top of the judiciary, says a report today.

The criminal justice system, it concludes, is still run largely by men, with women concentrated at the receiving end of justice rather than meting it out. The report is the result of a year-long inquiry by a commission set up by the Fawcett Society, the campaigning group for women’s equality, under Vera Baird, QC, the Labour MP for Redcar.

The commission found that there is still a “glass ceiling” for women in the criminal justice system, with only a few making it to the top positions in the judicary and prisons, police and Probation Service. Therefore, it says, most decisions are “man-made”.

At the same time, there are now more than 4,500 women in prison, many of them guilty of offences such as shoplifting, and who should often not be in jail at all, the report says.

The report echoes the views of Cherie Booth, QC, who on Sunday said: “Prisons are — or at least should be — places of absolute last resort for women whose offending is so serious that there can be no alternative to custody.”

There is only 1 woman out of 12 judges in the House of Lords; 5 women out of 43 police chief constables; 18 out of 42 chief probation officers; and 31 women out of 138 prison governors.

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