One of the issues that would be discussed was alternatives to prison. I wondered whether they were going to cover at all the situation in other countries and draw comparisons. The statistics for and attitudes towards women in prison seem to vary greatly from country to country. I had been intrigued by attitudes in places like Italy where apparently there are very few women in prison as the belief is that they should not be separated from their children and they are instead put under what they call ‘house arrest’. This is clearly not restricted to women as ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at one point faced house arrest as well, in this case ostensibly because of his age, according to news reports. Worldwide there are approximately 625,000 women and girls held in detention, including those convicted and those on remand, out of a total of about 10.1m prisoners serving sentences or in custody.162 Of these women about one third are in the USA. Out of the total prison population, the median percentage of women in prison worldwide is about 4.45 per cent, with Africa generally being just under and Asia being a bit over.
