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Topic 11: gender and crime (women) - Coggle Diagram
Topic 11: gender and crime (women)
Statistics: Heidensohn and Silvestri
-4 out of 5 convinced offenders in England and Wales are male.
-By the age of 40, 9% of females have a criminal conviction, angst 32% of males
-Males are likely to be repeat offenders, and commit more serious crime
-higher proportion of males are convicted of violence and sexual offences
Results: lower conviction rates for women, higher rate of victimisation.
Are female criminals treated more leniently or harshly than men?
Chivalry (women are elevated) Thesis:
-women are treated more leniently
Women are treated more leniently with the criminal justice system due to this being heavily male dominated.
This means the police may be more likely to caution rather than charge women, and the courts are more inclined to acquit or impose more lenient sentences.
Campbell: carried out self-report studies and found:
-females most likely to be cautioned rather than prosecuted
-A woman is almost as likely to be the perpetrator of a crime as a man.
Women are treated more harshly:
Due to the CJS being patriarchal
Smart: women are actually seen as doubly deviant:
-deviated away from social norms by breaking the law
-deviated away from gender norms which state how women should behave
Example: Karen Matthews- 8 year sentence, planned kidnap of own daughter with her boyfriend to generate money, reported her daughter as missing but she was actually being held in her boyfriends house.
Vanessa George- 10 year sentence, female paedophile, ran a nursery, sexually abuse
Stewart: people in charge of the law perception of female defendants characters were based on stereotypical gender roles. Women who don't conform are more harshly punished.
Carlen: Argues when women are jailed, it is according to the courts assessment of them as wives, mothers and daughters, rather than the seriousness of the crime.
EVALUATION:
-stats show that most men are criminals, therefore women are not treated more harshly
EVALUATION:
-Some women are treated more leniently, those who fit hegemonic gender roles
-many women now work in the CJS, so the thought of letting women off is not accurate.
-After the sexual liberation, many argue that chivalry is dead and men do not have this attitude towards women anymore
Why women commit less crime
Sex Role theory:
Parsons: men perform instrumental roles and are largely out of the home, whereas women stay in home. Additionally, boys lack a role model during socialisation and reject behaviour of tenderness etc.
Cohen: lack of an adult male role model means boys are likely to turn to male street gangs for masculine identity.
EVALUATION:
-Walklate- criticises for biological assumptions. Parsons assumes that as women can bear children, they are best suited for the expressive role. (Liberal feminists support this)
Control Theories:
Heidensohn: Control over women occur in 3 ways-
-In the home (domestic violence, triple shift, women have responsibilities like childcare) (Daughters gain bedroom culture)
-In the public (pressure on gender roles, be more sophisticated, threat of going out in the night) (Lees: boys use sexual language when a girl doesn't conform 'slag')
-In Employment (women are more likely to be sexual harassed, they are supervised by men)
EVALUATION:
-Underplays the value of free will and choice
-laws such as sex discrimination have helped women succeed in the workplace
-women can commit crime at home
Growing female criminality
Carlen:
-women committing crime was a rational choice
Did unstructured interviews with 39 wc women who were convicted of a range of offences and found it appeared to be a rational choice.
Crime was the only decent route to a decent standard of living.
Class and Gender deals:
-The class deal (women who work will be offered material rewards, with a decent standard of living and leisure opportunities)
-The gender deal (patriarchal ideology promises women material and emotional reward from family life if they conform to the gender and domestic roles)
If women don't have these two deals they will commit crime
EVALUATION:
-women work, so no longer look for the deals
-romanticises wc female crime as something that is needed to do to improve their situation
-unrepresentative (only small sample)
-realists argue crime is a real issue, not just a choice you make when your not happy
Liberation theory:
Adler: women have more rights and freedom so are committing more crime. Additionally, they have become more confident and assertive.
EVALUATION:
-female crime rate rose before the liberation movement
-Laidler and Hunt: female gang members in the USA were expected to conform to trad gender roles
-presents women as rational
-Chesney Lind: most criminals are wc, commit more crime than liberated women
The criminalisation of females:
Steffensmeier and Schwartz:
-the police stats on female criminality didn't match the data found in victim surveys (they didn't report an increase in attacks by females)
Net Widening: in reality, there has been no change in violent crimes committed by women. The rise in arrests was due to prosecuting women for less serious crimes (we arrest more often now)
Sharpe and Gelsthorpe:
-growing trend towards prosecuting females for low-level physical altercations.
Chesney-Lind:
-domestic violence has led to a steep rise in female violence stats (when a couple argue, both are arrested)
Burman and Batchelor:
judges, officers and police were influenced by media stereotypes of a violent 'ladette' female and the idea that female behaviour is getting worse
Steffensmeier:
-media-driven moral panics about girls affected sentencing decisions.