gender differences in offending Flashcards
key areas
- Biological, socialisation and social control differences (control theory) (seen previously - not in this set of notes)
- Differences in the types of crime (seen previous)
- Opportunity differences (see previous)
- Different impact of changes in society (see previous)
- Different experiences of patriarchy (see previous)
- Different treatment by the CJS (see below)
the criminal justice system and gender bias
Polak - the ‘masked female offender’ - official stats underestimate female criminality such as shoplifting, criminal abortions, female domestic servants etc
- law enforcement agents, lawyers , police, magistrates etc all tend to be men who have been brought up to be chivalrous and are usually lenient with female offenders (this is why they appear less on stats)
- A more important factor is that women are good at hiding their crimes - this is attributed to biology - good at hiding e.g menstration pain/ sexual interest (men cannot pretend to be aroused or not)
the criminal justice system and gender bias - eval
- Stephen Jones - there is little evidence that female domestic servants commit many crimes against their employers, or that women are Bette at hiding crimes they have committed
- Heidensohn - states Polak’s views fail to attribute male crime to biological predispositions to aggression and violence - views are also largely based on stereotypes of women which are largely wrong
- Polak’s work has no credibility today, however, he was important as he was the first to suggest that official crime stats greatly underestimate female criminality
chivalry thesis
- Bias against women v leniency towards women
Carlen - sentences handed out by the CJS are partly influenced by an assessment of character and performance in relation to their traditional role as a wife, mother etc - violent women are seen as far worse than violent men as they are deviating more
Walkate - in rape cases it is not the defendant on trial but the victim as she has to prove her respectability to have evidence accepted
Adler - women who are deemed to lack respectability, such as single parent families, teen mums etc find it hard to have their testimony heard in court
Pollack - as stated previously - women are committing crime but because of male chivalry socialised into them they let women off with lighter sentences or don’t accuse them
18% of all people cautioned in 2010 were women
Allen - 1987 stats show 73% of women were found guilty for a motoring offence but were only given a fine - as compared to 54% of men - men are given more prison sentenced than women
- Women are more likely to be cautioned than sentenced
Heidensohn - women = sentenced more harshly than men in crimes of similar circumstance
- women are imprisoned rather than given community based punishments
- sexually promiscuous girls are more likely to be taken into care than men
(basically what Carlen was saying) Evil women theory - where women are seen as neglectful and violent esp. against children they will be perceived as far worse than men (by CJS) - seen as ‘doubly deviant’ because they commit crimes AND violate their traditional gender stereotypes
Farrington and Morris - although men did receive more severe sentencing than women, these differences disappeared when the severity of the offences was taken into account
- Types of crime women commits affects chivalry
Steward - 103 remand hearings found ‘the majority’ of decisions are based primarily on offence seriousness, without consideration of the defendants gender - this was also the case with bail which was just based on severity of offence and not gender
Box - SRS evidence ‘ the weight of evidence on women committing serious offences does not give clear support to the view that they relieve differential and more favourable treatment from members of the public, police or judges
Buckle and Farrington - observational study of shoplifting in England found 2.8% of 142 males compared to 1.4% of 261 females shoplifted - small sample bu allowed a single crime to be measured and provides against the chivalry thesis
Allen - in serious crimes including manslaughter - women sometimes escape prison - this is not the case for men
Campbell - compared her own data on 66 16 year old school girls demo an urban area with similar data collected by West and Farrington (397 16 year old males). This data showed 1.33 offences were committed by males compared to 1.0 of females - this has drastically declined when compared to official data of 1976 which showed 8.95 % of males convicted for every female conviction
Less of a threat to society - women’s crime = less serious = less of a threat = more informal approaches rather than charged
- women receive more cautions than men, usually due to the types of crime they commit e.g shoplifting and also they are more likely to admit their offence which is needed to be charged with an offence
typifications cicourel / types of deviants are not usually perceived by officers as women - more likely to be chivalrous
KA6 women - police stereotypes
double standards of the CJS
Heidensohn - women = sentenced more harshly when comparing crimes of similar circumstance
- they are imprisoned rather than given community based punishment
- this is due to a deviation from societal norms of women/ female sexuality
- sexually promiscuous women are more likely to be taken into care compared to boys
-courts are reluctant to send young mothers with children to prison
- the CJS is based on ‘dual’ and ‘confused’ assumptions of women
Hilary Allen - her studies show women are partly treated more leniently e.g in motoring offences + escape with low-tariff punishment across a range of offences and were much less likely to be sent to prison
- yet women are also more likely to be put on probation for some offences (policies are based on traditional notions of masculinity and felinity)
Carlen (backs up Allen) research into Scottish judges - in an interview the sheriffs stated they were unlikely to imprison women who were good mothers and much more likely to imprison bad mothers
chivalry thesis eval
- Heidensohn argues women are not treated leniently, but actually punished more harshly than men because they are seen as ‘double deviants’ - 1. they break the law, 2. they have offended the more fundamental laws of sex-role behaviour
- Evidence on remands and sentencing is ambiguous - women are less likely ti be remanded is custody in recent years, less likely to be given custodial sentences and id they do get custody - more likely yo be given shorter sentences than men (however research indicates this is because of the types of crimes being committed and not gender)
- most evidence regarding the chivalry thesis was in the 1970s-1980s - in recent years the CJS system is not overwhelming male - in 2016 2/10 police offenders and judges were women and over half of magistrates were women
