Gender and Crime

Question 1

OCS on gender and crime

Answer 1

Show that:

-Women commit fewer crimes.
-Women commit less serious, ‘victimless’, non-violent crimes.
-Men are more likely to re-offend.

Question 2

+c of OCS on gender and crime

Answer 2

When it comes to punishments,
women are more likely to be cautioned, rather than charged for a crime they’ve committed.

Question 3

Women less criminal, OCS are accurate:
Functional sex role theory (parsons)

Answer 3

in the process of gender socialisation, girls have an adult role model (mother at home) to
learn the feminine traits from. On the other hand, to become masculine, boys have to reject anything that is feminine such as being gentle, tender and emotional. In order to prove their masculinity, boys engage in compensatory compulsory masculinity though aggression and acts of delinquency. Therefore, as a result of different gender socialisation, boys are more likely to be criminal.

Question 4

Women less criminal, OCS are accurate:
Functional sex role theory
(A.Cohen + New Right)

Answer 4

fathers are much less involved in the upbringing of children thus the absence of a male role model at home leads boys to turn to all-male street gangs as a source of masculine identity. Such gangs promote toughness and risk taking which leads boys into crime.

New Right claim that this happens in female-headed lone parent families in which boys do not have a positive male role model.

Question 5

+c of sex role theory

Answer 5

Walklate criticises the sex role theory for basing its claims on
biological differences between women, when these are, in fact, socially constructed.

Question 6

Women less criminal, OCS are accurate:
Heidensohn

Answer 6

women are less criminal than men because the society is patriarchal and it imposes greater control over women’s lives which prevents them from breaking the law.
Women are controlled in three ways:
-Home
-Work
-Public

Question 7

Heidensohn- How are women controlled at home

Answer 7

women’s domestic role of housework and childcare confine women to their homes. This reduces their opportunities to offend. Similarly daughters are
less likely to stay out late. As a result they develop a bedroom culture – socialising at home with friends rather than going out. Girls
are also expected to help around the house more than boys which keeps them busy. This reduces their chances of offending.

Question 8

Heidensohn- How are women controlled in the workplace

Answer 8

women’s behaviour is controlled by male managers through sexual
harassment. Women tend to hold subordinate positions which prevents them from committing white collar crime such as fraud.

Question 9

Heidensohn- How are women controlled in public

Answer 9

women are controlled by the threat and fear of violence against them in public places. Therefore, they avoid going out at night which prevents them from breaking the
law. Also, women are controlled in public through the fear of losing their respectability, e.g. women tend not to go to pubs on their own for fear of being regarded as ‘loose’. Thus, by avoiding public places women have fewer opportunities to get involved in
crime.

Question 10

+C of Heidensohn

Answer 10

Deterministic as she sees women’s behaviour as determined by external forces such as patriarchy but ignores that women have free will and choose to commit crime. Also ignores the fact that women now have greater equality with men in workplace so can commit WHite collar crime and corporate crimes

Question 11

Women are less criminal, OCS are accurate:
Carlen

Answer 11

carried out unstructured interviews with 39 15-49-year-old working class women who had
been convicted of a range of crimes.

Carlen used a version of Hirschi’s Control theory to explain female criminality. Control theory argues that the level of integration into society determines whether a person turns to crime. Those for
which the rewards of crime are greater than the social loss are likely to break the law.

Question 12

Carlen- How does class deal and gender deal prevent women from committing crime

Answer 12

Carlen argues that women are led to conform by the promise of two types of rewards:

Class deal – the social promise that hard work brings material rewards, e.g. A high standard of living.
Gender deal – the social promise that women will receive emotional rewards from family life.

For women who have not received the promises of class and gender deal, criminality becomes an
option as they have nothing to lose. The class deal can fail women if they are poor or can’t find
employment. The gender deals can fail women if they had experienced abuse. Therefore, it is when
the class and gender deal are not fulfilled that women turn to crime.

Question 13

+C of carlen

Answer 13

small sample so not representative, only looked at w/c female offenders, is deterministic
– ignores the free will that can lead women into crime.

Question 14

Women are less criminal, OCS are accurate:
Messerschmidt

Answer 14

Argues that males are more criminal then females. He argues that masculinity is a social construct which men have to achieve. To achieve their
masculinity, men have to draw on numerous resources.

Question 15

Messerschmidt- Hegemonic and subordinate masculinity

Answer 15

Hegemonic masculinity is the dominant, prestigious type
that most men will want to achieve. It is defined through paid labour, subordination of women,
heterosexism and uncontrollable sexuality.

There are also subordinated masculinities. These are held by gay men (they don’t want to achieve the hegemonic masculinity), working class and ethnic minority men – they may not have the resources needed to achieve hegemonic masculinity.

Question 16

Messerschmidt- how does having the subordinate masculinity lead to crime

Answer 16

Crime can be a resource used by men to achieve the hegemonic masculinity. For example:

White middle class youths – at school they have to subordinate themselves to teachers in order to achieve middle class status. This creates an accommodating masculinity. In order to achieve the hegemonic masculinity they commit acts of vandalism and anti-social behaviour outside the school.

White working class youths – achieve their hegemonic masculinity through anti-social behaviour in and outside the
school.

Black working class youths – may use gang membership as means of achieving masculinity.

White middle class men – can use white collar crime to achieve masculinity.

Question 17

+C of Messerschmidt

Answer 17

fails to explain why not all men use crime to achieve masculinity.

Question 18

Women less criminal than men, OCS are accurate:
Winlow

Answer 18

Globalisation has led to the decline in traditional men’s jobs so men can’t express masculinity. At the same time night time economy has provided men jobs to express their masculinity.

Question 19

Winlow’s study

Answer 19

Studied bouncers in Sunderland and found that working as bouncers provided young men with both paid employment and illegal business opportunities in drugs, etc. as well as the opportunity to demonstrate their masculinity through the use of violence.

Therefore, postmodernity has enabled the emergence of an organised criminal subculture
which offers men illegal business opportunities.

To maintain their employability, the bouncers have to use their bodily capital – muscular
build.

Question 20

Women are criminals:
Pollak

Answer 20

Chivalry thesis argues that women are as criminal as men but CJS treat women more leniently when they break law. This is because men ( judges, police officers, etc. ) are socialised to be chivalrous (treat women as ladies). Therefore police officers are more likely to issue a caution when dealing with women. Similarly judges less likely to jail women.

This has been supported by self-report studies

Question 21

Criticisms of chivalry thesis

Answer 21

Farrington and Morris – a study of sentencing of 408 offences of theft in a magistrate’s court found that women were not sentences more leniently for the same offence than men.

Buckle and Farrington - observational study of shoplifting in a department store found that there were twice as many male shoplifters as female, when OCS show that the numbers of male and female shoplifters are equal. This shows that female shoplifters are more likely to be prosecuted.

Hales et al – SRS show men are more criminal and the gender gap increases as offences become more serious – men commit more serious offences.

Yearnshire – many crimes committed by men are not reported, e.g. female victims of domestic abuse will suffer 35
incidents of abuse before they call the police.

Heidensohn – female offenders=courts treat them more harshly if they are seen to have deviated from gender norms. They apply double standards by female offenders more harshly if they see them as ‘wayward’.

Question 22

More criticisms of chivalrous thesis :
Carlen
Walklate

Answer 22

Carlen – the criminal justice system is patriarchal and the judges’ decisions, when sentencing female offenders, are based on traditional gender norms. Thus when sentencing female offenders, the judges’ decision is based, not on the seriousness of the offence, but on the judges’ assessment of the woman as a wife, mother and daughter.

Walklate – in rape cases, the victims have to prove their respectability so it is they who are on trial, not the offender.

Question 23

women are criminal OCS inaccurate:
Adler- Liberation thesis

Answer 23

as women are increasingly becoming liberated from patriarchy, their crimes are becoming as frequent and as serious as that of men.

This is because, with greater equality, women have started to take on traditionally male roles in both legitimate and illegitimate activities.

As a result, women are now committing more ‘typically’ male crimes such as violence and white-collar crime.

Question 24

+c of liberation thesis

Answer 24

Steffensmeier and Schwartz – in the USA, the OCS show a rise in female violent crime, but this is not confirmed by SRS or victim surveys. They conclude there has not been an increase in female violent crime, but that the police are now more likely to arrest women which makes it look like their criminality is increasing. They say the CJS is ‘widening the net’ – arresting women for minor violent crimes, for which they would not have been arrested for in the
past.
This is supported by Chasney-Land who found that the mandatory arrests in domestic abuse cases leads to both partners being arrested, when in fact the woman is the victim.
Sharpe and Gelsthorpe found the same in the UK, where women are being arrested for minor physical altercations including playground fights. Young – calls this defining deviance up – what used to be seen as deviant is now being criminalised by the CJS which make it look like female crime is increasing.

Question 25

+ of liberation thesis :
Burman and Batchelor

Answer 25

argue the media have created a moral panic about female crime by portraying women as ladettes - drunk and disorderly and out of control. This then leads to police action against women.