There are currently around 79,000 prisoners in England and Wales. The overwhelming majority of them - around 75,000 - are male, and are serving time for a wide range of offences, most notably sexual offences, drug offences, possession of weapons and motoring offences.
Women are most represented amongst those serving time for fraud - making up 20 per cent of them. As home to some of the country's busiest courts, Greater Manchester processes a significant proportion of women offenders.
And the sentences these women receive often leads to heated debates in M.E.N comments sections between readers, with some claiming women 'get away with it' because of their gender.
