Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Gender, crime and justice - Coggle Diagram
Gender, crime and justice
Gender patterns in crime:
- Most crime appears to be committed by males
- Heidensohn and Silvestri (2012) - gender differences are most significant feature of recorded crime
Official stats:
- 4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales are male
- By age 40, 9% females have criminal conviction, 32% males
Among offenders:
- Higher proportion female than male offenders are convicted of property offences. Higher proportion male convicted of violence or sexual acts
- Males more likely to be repeat offenders, longer criminal careers, commit more serious crimes - men about 15x more likely to be convicted of homocide
Do women commit more crime?
- Some sociologists and criminologists argue stats underestimate amount of female against male offending. Two arguments:
- Typically 'female' crimes less likely to be reported or noticed
- When women's crimes are detected and reported, less likely to be prosecuted or let off more lightly
Chivalry thesis:
- Most CJ agents are men and men are socialised to act more chivalrous towards women
- Pollak (1950) - men have protective attitude towards women - 'men hate to accuse women and thus send them to their punishment, police officers dislike to arrest them, district attorneys to prosecute them, judges and juries to find them guilty'
CJS more lenient so crimes are less likely to end up in official stats - invalid picture, exaggerates extent of gender differences
- Self-report studies - does suggest female offenders treated more leniently
Graham and Bowling (1995) research sample of 1721 14-25 year olds - although males more likely to offend, difference small than recorded by official stats
Males 2.33x more likely to admit to having committed an offence in previous year - official stats show men 4x more likely to offend
- Flood-page et al (2000) - while only 1/11 female self-reported offenders had been cautioned or prosecuted, males 1/7 self-reported offenders
- Court stats:
- female more likely to be released on bail rather than remanded in custody
- female more likely to receive fine or community sentences, less likely sent to prison - average shorter sentence
- only 1/9 female offenders receive prison sentence of shoplifting by 1/5 male
- Hood (1992) study over 3000 defendants - women about 1/3 less likely to be jailed in similar cases
Evidence against:
- Farrington and Morris (1983) study of sentencing 408 offences of theft in magistrates' court - women not sentenced more leniently for comparable offences
Box (1981) review British and American self-report studies - women who commit serious offences not treated more favourably
- Buckle and Farrington (1984) observational study of shoplifting in department store witnessed twice as many males shoplifting as females - despite official stat numbers more or less equal - women shoplifters may be more likely to be prosecuted than male
- Self-report studies - males commit more offences.
Hales et al (2009) - men significantly more likely to have been offenders in all major offence categories
Other studies - gender gap increase as offences become more serious
- Under-reporting of male crimes against women - 2012, only 8% females who had been victim of serious sexual assault reported it to the police
Yearnshire (1997) - a woman typically suffers 35 assaults before reporting DV
- Crime of powerful underrepresented in self-report and victim surveys - more likely committed by men by virtue of more privileged position in job market
- May been seen to be treated more leniently as offences are less serious - lower rate of prosecutions compared to self-reported offending admit to less serious and less likely to go to trial
Women offenders more likely show remorse, receive caution over court
Bias against women:
- Heidensohn (1996) - courts treat females more harshly than males when they deviate from gender norms
- Double standards - court punish girls for premature or promiscuous activity
Sharpe (2009) - analysis of 55 youth worker records - 7/11 girls referred for support as they were sexually active, 0/44 boys
- Women who don't conform to accepted standards of monogamous heterosexuality and motherhood punished more harshly
Stewart (2006) - magistrates' perceptions of female defendants' characters were based on stereotypical gender roles
- Carlen (1997) - when women are jailed, it is for 'the seriousness of their crimes and more according to the court's assessment of them as wives, mothers and daughters'.
Girls whose parents believe them to be beyond control more likely to receive custodial sentencing to those who lived 'conventional' lives
Found Scottish judges more likely to jail women whose children were in care than who they saw as good mothers
- Feminists - double standards exist CJS is patriarchal - evident in dealing with rape cases, numerous cases of male judges making sexist, victim-blaming remarks
Smart (1989) quote Judge Wild as saying 'women who say no do not always mean no... If she doesn't want it she only has to keep her legs shut'
Walklate (1998) - in rape cases it's not the defendant who's on trial but the victim, prove her respectability to have her evidence accepted
Adler (1987) - women who are deemed to lack respectability find it difficult to have their testimony believed by the court
Explaining female crime
Functionalist sex role theory:
- Parsons (1955) - traces differences on crime and deviance to gender roles in the conventional nuclear family - men instrumental, women expressive
Give girls access to adult role model, boys reject feminine models of behaviour
Boys want to distance themselves from models by engaging in 'compensatory compulsory masculinity' - aggression, anti-social behaviour = delinquency
- Cohen (1955) - relative lack of an adult male role model means boys more likely to turn to all male street gangs as source of masculine identity - status earned through toughness, risk-taking and delinquency
- New Right - absence male role model in matrifocal lone parent families leads to boys turning to criminal street gangs as source of status and identity
- Walklate (2003) - criticise sex role theory for biological assumptions - parsons assumes because women have biological capacity to bear children they are best suited for expressive role
- Feminists - alternative explanations for woman's patterns of crime and deviance - patriarchal nature of society and women's subordinate position
Heidensohn: patriarchal control:
- Women's behaviour is conformist - commit fewer crimes and less serious crimes than men - patriarchal society impose greater control over women and this reduces their opportunities to offend
Control at home:
- Housework, childcare = restrictions on time and movement, confined to house, reduce opportunities to offend - imposed through force
- Dobash and Dobash - many violent attacks result from men's dissatisfaction with wives' performance of domestic duties. Exercise control through financial power
- Daughters subject to patriarchal control - less likely to come and go as please. 'Bedroom culture'. Do more housework than boys - less crime opportunity
Control in public:
- Threat or fear of male violence
- Islington Crime Survey - 54% of women avoided going out after dark for fear of being victims of crime, 14% men
- Heidensohn - sensationalist media reporting of rapes adds to women's fearFear of being defines as not respectable - gain reputation through dress, demeanour etc
- Lees - in school boys maintain control through sexualised verbal abuse - 'slag' if don't perform to gender role expectations
Control at work:
- Behaviour controlled by male supervisors and managers - Sexual harassment widespread and helps keep women in their place
- Subordinate position reduce opportunities to engage in major criminal activity
Glass ceiling prevents women rising to senior positions where there's a greater opportunity to commit fraud - less involved in white collar crime
Carlen: class and gender deals:
- Unstructured rape-recorded interviews, study of 39 15-36 year old WC women who had been convicted of a range of crimes (theft, fraud, burglary, violence)
20 were in prison and youth custody at the time od interviews
Most convicted serious female criminals are WC
- Hirschi - control theory - humans act rationally and are controlled by being offered a deal of rewards in return for conforming to social norms - turn to crime is don't believe rewards will be forthcoming and rewards are greater than risks
Carlen - WC women led to conform through promise of two types of rewards:
- class deal - women who work will be offered material rewards, decent standard of living and leisure opportunities
- gender deal - patriarchal ideology promises women material and emotional rewards from family life by conforming to norms of a conventional domestic gender role
Class deal:
- Women failed to find legitimate way of earning decent living and left them feeling powerless, oppressed and victims of injustice
- 32 had always been in poverty
- Some found qualifications gained in jail had been no help in gaining work upon release. Others had been on training course but still couldn't get a job
- Many experienced problems and humiliations in trying to claim benefits
- Gained no rewards from class deal felt nothing to lose by using crime to escape poverty
Gender deal:
- Conforming to patriarchal family norms, most women had either not had opportunity to make the deal or saw few rewards and many disadvantages of family life
- Some had been abused physically or sexually by fathers or subjected to DV by partners
- Over half spent time in care, broke bonds with family and friends
- Leaving or running away from care often found themselves homeless, unemployed and poor
- Carlen concludes - for these women, poverty and being brought up in care or oppressive family life were two main causes of criminality
- Drug and alcohol addiction and desire for excitement were contributing factors - often stemmed from poverty or being brought up in care
- Being criminalised and jailed made class deal less available and crime more attractive
Evaluation:
- Heidensohn and Carlen both based on combination of feminism and control theory
- H - many patriarchal controls help prevent women from deviating
- C - failure of patriarchal society to deliver promised deals to some women removes the controls preventing them offending
- Both control and feminist theories - see women behaviour as determined by external forces - underplays importance of free will and choice in offending
- Carlen sample small = unrepresentative, consisted largely of WC and serious offenders
Liberation thesis:
- Adler - as women become liberated from patriarchy, their crimes will become as frequent and as serious as men's - women's liberation has led to new type of female criminal and rise in female crime rate
Changes in structure of society led to changes in women's offending behaviour - patriarchal controls and discrimination lessened, more opportunities in education and work have become more equal, women begun to adopt traditionally male role in legitimate and illegitimate activity
Women commit female and male offences - violent and white collar
Women's greater self confidence, assertiveness and greater opportunities in legitimate structure
- Both overall rate of female offending and the female share of offences rose during the second half of the 20th century - between 50s and 90s female share of offences rose from 1/7 to 1/6
- Adler argues pattern of female crime has shifted - cites studies showing rising levels of female participation in crimes previously regarded as male - embezzlement, robbery
- More recently, media talk of growth of 'girl gangs'
Denscombe - study of Midlands teenagers' self-images - females as likely as males to engage in risk-taking behaviour and girls adopting more male stances - desire to be in control, look hard
Criticisms:
- Female crime rate began rising 50s - long before women's liberation movement (late 60s)
- Most female criminals are WC - group least likely influenced by liberation
Chesney-Lind (1997) in USA poor and marginalised women more likely than liberated women to be criminals
- Chesney-Lind - evidence of women branching out into more typically male offences such as drugs. Usually because of link with prostitution - unliberated female offence
- Little evidence that illegitimate opportunity structure of professional crime has opened up to women
Laidler and Hunt - female gang members in USA expected to conform to conventional gender roles in same way as non-deviant girls
- Overestimates extent to which women have been liberated and extent to which they are now engaged in serious crime
- Does draw attention to importance of investigating relationship between changes in women's position and patterns of female offending
Females and violent crime:
- Trend official stats support liberation thesis - increase female arrest and conviction stats for violent crime
Hand and Dodd (2009) - between 2000 and 2008 police stats show number of females arrested for violence rose by average 17% each year
Similar trends noted in other countries - Canada, Australia, USA
- Female increasingly committing typically male crimes
Criminalisation of females:
- Steffensmeier and Schwartz, USA (2009) - while female share of arrests for violence grew from 1/5 to 1/3 between 1980 and 2003, rise in police stats not matched by findings of victim surveys - victims didn't report increase in attacks by females. Self-report studies no upward trend in female criminality
No change in women's involvement but rise in arrests due to justice system widening the net, arresting for less serious forms of violence then previously
- Chesney-Lind (2006) - policy of mandatory arrests for DV led to steep rise in female violence stats in USA - couple fight both may be arrested even though more likely women is victim. Females previously ignored by justice system now labelled as violent offenders
- Sharpe and Gelsthorpe (2009, UK) - net widening policies producing rise in official stats for female violent crimes - growing trend towards prosecuting females for low-level physical altercations, most convictions minor offences no weapons
- Young (2011) - defining deviance up - catch trivial offences in the net. Past behaviour seen as welfare issue now relabelled as criminality
A moral panic about girls:
- Social construction resulting from moral panic over young women's behaviour may explain increase criminalisation of females for this type of crime
- Burman and Batchelor (2009) - media depictions of young women as drunk and disorderly, out of control and looking for fights
- Sharpe (2009) - professionals influenced by media stereotypes of violent 'ladettes' and many believed girls' behaviour was rapidly getting worse
Steffensmeier et al, USA (2005) - media-driven moral panics about girls were effecting sentencing decisions
- SFP and amplification spiral
- Burman and Batchelor - 'not increase in violent offending but increased reporting, recording and prosecuting of young women accused of violent crime
Gender and victimisation:
- Large-scale national victim surveys - Crime Survey for England and Wales - gender differences in level and types of victimisation and relationships between victims and offenders
- Homicide victims - about 70% are male. female victims more likely to know killer and in 60% these cases was partner or ex. Males most likely to be killed by friend or acquaintance
- Victims of violence - fewer women than men victims of violence (2%, 4%)
- women most likely to be victimised by an acquaintance, men by stranger
- more women victims of intimate violence during adult lives (31%, 18%)
- 10x more women reported been sexually assaulted than men
- only 8% females who'd experiences serious sexual assault reported it to police. 1/3 who didn't report still believed police couldn't do much to help
- Mismatch between fear and risk - research women greater fear of crime CSEW shows they're less risk of victimisation
Lea and Young (1993) local victim surveys - women are greater risk than men
Evidence early studies (Sparks et al) - female victims may be more likely to refuse to be interviewed
- Victim surveys don't necessarily convey frequency or severity
Walby and Allen (2004) - women more likely to be victim of multiple incidents
Ansara and Hindin (2011) - women victims experienced more severe violence and control
Why do men commit crime?
- Feminists - although 'malestream', non-feminist theories of crime focused only on males, theories assumed they were explaining all crime rather than solely male
Cain (1989) - 'men as males have not been subject of criminological gaze'
- May have focused on male criminality but not what it is about being male that leads them to offend
Masculinity and crime:
- Messerschmidt (1993) - masculinity is a social construct or accomplishment and men have to constantly work at constructing and presenting it to others
Different masculinities co-exist in society but hegemonic masculinity is dominant, prestigious that men with to accomplish
- 'work in paid labour market, the subordination of women, heterosexism and the driven and uncontrollable sexuality of men'
- Subordinated masculinities - gay, lower class, ethnic minority
- M - crime and deviance as resources different men use to accomplish masculinity
- White MC youth - subordinate to teachers to achieve MC status, accommodating masculinity in school - outside masculinity takes oppositional form (drinking, vandalism)
- White WC youths - less chance educational success, masculinity opposed in and out school - constructed around sexist attitudes, being tought, opposing teachers authority
Willis' lads
- Black lower WC youths - few expectations of reasonable job, use gang membership and violence to express masculinity, turn to serious property crime to achieve material success
- M - MC men may use crime but different type (white collar, corporate crime) to accomplish hegemonic masculinity, poorer groups use street robbery to achieve subordinated masculinity
Criticisms:
- Is masculinity explanation of male crime or just description of male offenders. M in danger of circular argument that masculinity explains crime because they are crimes committed by males
- Doesn't explain why not all men use crime to accomplish masculinity
- Over-works concept of masculinity to explain virtually all male crimes
Winlow: postmodernity, masculinity and crime:
- Globalisation shift to postmodern de-industrialised society - loss many traditional manual jobs WC men able to express masculinity by hard physical labour and providing for families
- Job opportunities in industry declines, expansion service sector (clubs, pubs, bars) - Young WC men = legal employment, lucrative criminal opportunities and means of expressing masculinity
- Winlow (2001) - study bouncers in Sunderland, North East England, areas of deindustrialisation and unemployment - bouncers - young men: paid work, opportunity for illegal business ventures in drugs, duty free tobacco, alcohol, protection rackets + demonstrate masculinity through violence
- Winlow + Cloward and Ohlin distinction between conflict and criminal subcultures - modern society always been violent conflict subculture in Sunderland, hard men earned status through ability to use violence - absence professional criminal subculture little opportunity for career in organised crime
Bodily capital:
- Postmodern conditions - organised professional criminal subculture emerged as result of new illicit business opportunities found in night-time economy
In subculture, ability to use violence becomes masculitnity display and commodity to earn a living
- Maintain reputation and masculitinty use their bodily capital
- Winlow - not just use of violence but maintaining sign value of their bodies - look part to discourage competitors from challenging them
Postmodern society - signs take on reality of own independent thing they're supposed to represent