As a rule, women behave better than men, or are less frequently caught out: they make up just 5% of Britain’s prison population. Even these troublemakers are     1    than the opposite sex. In 2014, eight     2    ten women prisoners were     3    for non-violent     4    , compared with seven in ten male prisoners.
    Behind bars,     5    , a different trend emerges. It is women who more frequently     6    against prison rules. In the past year there were 137 punishments doled out per 100 women but only 105 for every 100 men. They are also more violent,     7    52 assaults on     8    per 1,000 female prisoners in 2015 whereas the male rate was 45. Why do women behave so badly in prison
    Diego Gambetta, a sociologist, says women make     9    inmates because they take longer to establish a     10    . Fighting, he says, "is an information-seeking device", and     11    the toughest men sport large muscles and scars, the toughest women are harder to     12    without a scrap. Another     13    is that female prisoners are trickier to manage because they are more likely to     14    from mental illness: in 2015 26% of them (and 16% of male inmates) had had a psychiatric     15    before going to prison. A third     16    is that female jails are less crowded, so unruly prisoners are easier to spot.
    The explanation that many academics and think-tanks     17    is that guards are less     18    towards women. A 1994 study of Texan prisons found that wardens in female prisons demanded total     19    but those in male prisons did not. Ellie Butt at the Howard League, a prison-reform charity, thinks little has changed. Female inmates, she says, are considered     20    deviant— "a woman, and a criminal" says one female ex-con. Guards may be more likely to write up and punish women’s verbal assaults on staff than men’s.