Crime is the when an individual or group commit an act against the law. Deviance is an act that is against the social norm and is labelled as deviant. Official statistics have proven that 80% of all crimes are committed by males. However the study of criminology have tended to be dominated by males, therefore the studies are done by men about men. The official statistics suggest that gender is perhaps the most significant single factor in whether an individual is convicted of crime.
The official statistics often comply with the common assumption that men commit more crimes then women. According to official statistics, in 2005, 1.8 million offenders were guilty in which 79% were male and 7% of these were aged fewer than 18. The ratio of
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Official statistics show that this remains true. Allen (1987) also found evidence that women sometimes escape prison in very serious cases where a male defendant might have been expected to receive a prison term. Courts may be reluctant to imprison mothers with young children. However she also found that women were more likely than men to be put on probation for some offences.
However, the validity of the chivalry thesis is questioned by Box (1981) who reviewed the data from self-report studies in the UK and USA. He concluded that ‘the weight of evidence on women committing serious offences does not give clear support to the view that they receive differential and more favourable treatment’. This claim is supported by Graham and Bowling study which found that females were less likely than men to be involved in the more serious offences. The seriousness of the offence could explain the lower proportions of females among the convicted and cautioned than among self-reported offenders rather than leniency in the criminal justice system.
Another approach to evaluating the chivalry thesis is to examine sentencing policy which was done by Farrington & Morris (1983) who conducted a study of sentencing in Magistrates courts. They noted that some official figures did imply more leniency towards women. In 1979, 6.6% of men but only 2% of women found guilty of indictable crimes were imprisoned. Although men received more severe sentences than women, the research found that the
Most of the time, men try to justify female offenders just because they are women. One thing that should never be assumed is that everyone behaves like they do because of outside influences. Sometimes people are perfectly healthy (mentally, emotionally, and physically), but they simply make bad choices. In the end, chivalry is used to ‘protect’ those women; in other words, chivalry tends to be used to justify their actions by presenting them as victims. In most occasions, women use this stereotyping to their advantage because they know that if they do their sentencing will more likely be reduced.
Male and female offenders alike are incarcerated every day for various reasons. Some commit violent crimes while others are arrested for drug use or public-order offenses. The difference between the two are the rates at which they are incarcerated, the length or harshness of their sentences, for the same or similar crimes committed, patterns of drug use, and previous correctional history. While men still lead in violent crime rates, 54.3 percent male verse 36.6 percent female, women are more likely than men to serve sentences due to drug-related offenses and other nonviolent property crimes (American Corrections, 2016).
Gender and Crime Sex is commonly used to describe the innate biological characteristics of humans constituting their femaleness or maleness. Gender on the other hand, covers the social characteristics and usages associated with one sex or the other. Since such roles and customs can vary and be modified it follows that masculine and feminine the terms applied to the respective genders are much more flexible than female and male. In order to cover the subject of gender and crime it is important to explain its prehistory and standing as well as addressing the extensive material which appeared in the modern
Gender equality within the criminal justice system. If the factor of chivalry is a dominating answer to this issue we need more females in
The United States criminal justice system, an outwardly fair organization of integrity and justice, is a perfect example of a seemingly equal situation, which turns out to be anything but for women. The policies imposed in the criminal justice system affect men and women in extremely dissimilar manners. I plan to examine how gender intersects with the understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. Gender plays a significant role in understanding who commits what types of crimes, why they do so, who is most often victimized, and how the criminal justice system responds to these victims and offenders. In order to understand the current state of women and the way in which gender relates to crime and criminal justice, it is first
Women are twice as likely as men to avoid incarceration if convicted of a crime. Whether or not this is fair, though, is highly debated. Some politicians argue that women’s prisons be abolished all together, while Men’s Rights Activists push for equal sentencing for comparable crimes. It has been proven that judges tend to give women less time in prison, or no incarceration at all, and the reasons for this support the imbalance in sentencing. Though many view women’s tendency to receive lighter punishments as unfair, it is justified that women receive this treatment because of legal rules that surround the subject, the statistics that show women commit less serious and violent crimes, and how women being incarcerated impacts those around them.
The acceptance that the court system often treats female offenders differently than male offenders is an accurate statement; however, it comes with many caveats. Generally, the public views women as nurturers, motherly and incapable of
It would be foolish to assert that gender plays no role in the criminal justice system, just as it would be equally foolish to say that race plays no role in this system either. Covington and Bloom cite the work of Kivel (1992) in reminding all that "Where sexism is prevalent, one of the gender dynamics frequently found is that something declared genderless or gender neutral is, in fact, male oriented. The same phenomenon occurs in terms of race in a racist society, where the term "race neutral" generally means white" (2003). The criminal justice system reflects the needs of men and the values of men in a highly patriarchal society; the issue becomes more complicated when some scholars argue that women should fight for equal rights in all areas of life, including the criminal justice system, arguing that while equal treatment might hurt women in the short run, in the long run, it's the best policy for women (Covington & Bloom, 2003). On the other hand, opposing groups argue that women are inherently different from men and that insisting on equality will always create a situation where women lose out (Covington & Bloom, 2003). This debate creates an uncertain situation about how women should be treated in the criminal justice system and whether gender should play a role accounting for differential treatment.
Female Criminality consists of several outdated statistics regarding the rise of female offending. However, in viewing the current research on the subject, it appears that the overall theme of this dissertation's discussion is still relevant despite changes in the accompanying statistics as seen in viewing the following topics: the rise in female offending; the continual rise that females are committing more crimes than men; and the types of crimes that women are committing. In viewing Bruce Gross's 2009 article, "Battle of the Sexes: The Nature of Female Delinquency," as well as Elizabeth Cauffman's 2008 article, "Understanding the Female Offender," one can begin to see where current statistics regarding the female criminal lie.
With regards to female sentences, it can be seen on the one hand that the criminal justice system deals with female crimes more leniently than with male criminality, as referred to as the chivalry theory (Pollok, 1983). As many female offences are usually petty wrongdoings, such as shoplifting which makes up for nearly a half of all indictable convictions (Ministry of Justice, 2014), due to their gender, it is most likely that females are to be cautioned over receiving a prison sentence. However, this was not the case for Maxine Carr in 2003. A whirlwind of media interest surrounding Carr’s involvement, with the murders of two young girls from Soham, is argued to be the definitive reason as to why Carr received a prison sentence of three years, all for perverting the course of justice.
Since 1970, there has been an increasing and alarming rise 138 percent of violent crimes committed by women. Still, while the equivalent percentage compared to male violence is small 15 percent to 85 percent the fact that the numbers have elevated so drastically points to something changing in society.
Despite the general consensus that the number of females involved in crime is continuing to rise, males are still the dominant gender committing crimes, especially for violent offences. This may be why there is a continued lack of research on female offenders using a gender specific approach that accounts for gender differences. Historically, female offenders have been primarily studied using a gender-neutral model comprising mainly male offenders. Although there is support that a gender-neutral model can effectively apply to both male and female offenders (van der Knaap et al. 2012), there has been an ongoing debate on whether the pathways and processes that lead to female offending can be successfully explained and ultimately applied to interventions and preventions by using theories originally created to explain male crime (Steffensmeier & Allan, 1996).
Females are said to be very emotional and if they were troublemakers at a young age they are said to possess “masculine traits and characteristics” (Siegal & Walsh, 2015). Males tend to commit crimes like robbery, assault and burglary. This has changed in the last decade. The rate of offending has decreased for males by 27 percent and females about 15 percent. “Girls have increased their
Gender is clearly one of the major factors in the causes of crime as men commit far more crimes than women. “90% of those found guilty are men.” – the poverty site
The social process and traditional structure theory explained why female crime rates are rather lower than males. The social process theory tend to explain the traditional crime with regards to differential opportunity to lean criminal techniques and values. The use of the traditional theory shows evidence in which considered the overlap on the causes of crimes committed by both genders. Studies shows that both male and female offenders that came in contact with the criminal justice system often came from a social background that are typically of low socioeconomic status, poorly educated, under or unemployed, and minority groups (Steffensmeir and Allan, 1995). The only difference between male and female offenders is, female