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Sex-Based Sentencing: Sentencing Discrepancies Between Male and Female Sex Offenders
Abstract
The current research examines the utility of the evil woman hypothesis by examining sentencing discrepancies between male and female sex offenders. National Corrections Reporting Program data are used to identify sex offenders for the years 1994 to 2004 and the sentences they received for specific sex offenses. Statistical analyses reveal a significant difference in sentence length between men and women, but not in the expected direction. The evil woman hypothesis would assume women are sentenced more harshly, but data show men receive longer sentences for sex offenses than women. Support is provided for the chivalry hypothesis to explain immediate sentencing disparity.
... Research on females who cause sexual harm is limited, partially due to underreporting for female-perpetrated sex crimes (Hullenaar and Ruback 2020; Wong and Van de Schoot 2011). Existing studies have found females have a lower likelihood of arrest compared to males for forcible fondling and receive shorter sentences for sex crimes (Embry and Lyons 2012;Stolzenberg and D'Alessio 2004). Embry and Lyons (2012) argued these findings support the chivalry hypothesis-the theory that women receive less punishment due to a patriarchal view of women as childlike and weak (Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee 2006)-while they dispute the evil woman hypothesis-the theory that women face added penalties because of not conforming to gender norms (Spohn and Spears 1997). ...
... Existing studies have found females have a lower likelihood of arrest compared to males for forcible fondling and receive shorter sentences for sex crimes (Embry and Lyons 2012;Stolzenberg and D'Alessio 2004). Embry and Lyons (2012) argued these findings support the chivalry hypothesis-the theory that women receive less punishment due to a patriarchal view of women as childlike and weak (Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee 2006)-while they dispute the evil woman hypothesis-the theory that women face added penalties because of not conforming to gender norms (Spohn and Spears 1997). Other scholarship has noted that normative frames of masculinity and femininity have led to cisgender women being essentialized as innocent caretakers, allowing them to remain largely absent in scholarly conversations around sex crimes and in media reports (Christensen 2023;Hayes and Carpenter 2013). ...
... Regarding sex, this study's finding that being male increases arrest odds is consistent with data on sex-based differential involvement in sex crimes (Black et al. 2011). This is also consistent with past studies on sex and sentencing, which found that criminal legal system actors tended to be less lenient with male defendants (Brennan and Spohn 2009;Embry and Lyons 2012). Perhaps law enforcement officers, too, are less likely to grant leniency to those who are male who are reported for contact sex crimes. ...
This article investigates how the intersection of race and sex affects contact sex crime arrest odds. Logistic regression analyses of 2012–2016 U.S. National Incident‐Based Reporting System data for 391,352 people reported to law enforcement for contact sex crimes reveals that Black people reported for contact sex crimes have higher odds of arrest than those reported who are not Black, and the relationship between race and arrest odds varies by sex—the effect is stronger for those labeled “female” or “other” and weaker for those labeled “male.” I posit that sex strengthens the effect of race on contact sex crime arrest odds for those who are not male because race helps construct non‐male bodies as masculine, and in a U.S. cultural context that has viewed sex as a legitimate way of asserting male dominance, sexual violence is masculine. However, race is not necessary to construct most male bodies as masculine, making the strength of race's effect on contact sex crime arrest odds less significant for males.
... In some states in the United States, women received indeterminate sentences for the same offenses, of which men were given determinate/shorter sentences (e.g., see Moulds, 1978). However, some studies suggest that the CJS does not always treat women more harshly than males for some of the serious offenses, instead, the women are treated as men (see Embry & Lyons, 2012;Lu et al., 2013) or still more leniently (e.g., Embry & Lyons, 2012) when people expect that women should be treated more harshly. This will be discussed below. ...
... In some states in the United States, women received indeterminate sentences for the same offenses, of which men were given determinate/shorter sentences (e.g., see Moulds, 1978). However, some studies suggest that the CJS does not always treat women more harshly than males for some of the serious offenses, instead, the women are treated as men (see Embry & Lyons, 2012;Lu et al., 2013) or still more leniently (e.g., Embry & Lyons, 2012) when people expect that women should be treated more harshly. This will be discussed below. ...
... Moulds acknowledges that while this type of chivalry (protecting women as the weaker sex) had long disappeared as a formal institution, several chivalrous practices remain and favor women. Since men dominate the CJS, men consider women as deserving of protection (Embry & Lyons, 2012). This is also based on the idea that women constitute the weaker sex that needs protection (see Moulds, 1978;Franklin & Fearn, 2008). ...
Academic reports on the “evil women” hypothesis have focused mainly on the actions of criminal justice authorities (CJA). However, actions based on this hypothesis equally extend to ordinary members of the public. Vigilante justice on suspected criminals by mobs is a regular occurrence in Nigeria. Thus, the current article drew on vigilante justice on robbers to examine the notion of the evil women hypothesis from the perspective of mobs. Three robbery incidents in three different Nigerian cities involving robbers impersonating taxi operators known as “one-chance” robbers, were analyzed. In all the three incidents, the one-chance robbers comprising both men and women were caught by mobs. In all of them, the mobs stripped the female robbers naked in public whilst their male gang members were allowed to wear their clothes. The actions of the mob conformed to those of CJA with respect to the evil women hypothesis whereby female offenders are punished more severely than their male counterparts due to the idea that the former have crossed the morality boundary to commit a serious offense that goes against the gender-role expectations.
... Scholarly work on actual punishments also finds ICSO's and victim's sex and age matter (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Sandler & Freeman, 2011;Weinsheimer et al., 2017). For instance, Vandiver and Teske (2006) examining sex differences of ICSO in the juvenile justice system in Texas found girl ICSO were arrested at a younger age, their victims were younger and more likely of the same sex, and their sentences were shorter than boy ICSO. ...
... On average, male ICSO and those who victimized younger individuals received sentence recommendations that were more than 1.8 years longer than female offenders and those who victimized older adolescents. These findings replicate prior research and demonstrate that males and those with younger victims are viewed and treated differently than females and those with older victims (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Hassett-Walker et al., 2014;Sandler & Freeman, 2011;Shaw et al., 2022;Shields & Cochran, 2020;Vandiver & Teske, 2006;West et al., 2011). ...
... Additionally, these latent biases within individual decision makers in the justice system can contribute to documented disparities in outcomes for those who become involved with the system. As noted above, research on sentencing clearly shows that males, who are older, and assault children receive harsher punishments than their respective counterparts (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Hassett-Walker et al., 2014;Weinsheimer et al., 2017) even when cases are carefully matched (Shields & Cochran, 2020), demonstrating the system is biased against these offenders. Although legally relevant factors may account for some sex differences in sentencing, including that female ICSO are more likely to have (male) accomplices thereby possibly reducing perceptions of culpability to some (K. ...
The current study used an experimental vignette ( n = 1,093) to examine the effects of perpetrator sex and age, and victim sex and age, on simulated juror sentencing recommendations for individuals convicted of sexual offenses (ICSO). Path analyses were used to see if differences in punitive attitudes could be explained by perceptions of dangerousness participants attached to experimentally manipulated variables, as hypothesized by attribution theorists. Results show that participants consistently recommended longer sentences, higher fines, and indicated greater support for post-release sanctions for male offenders, older perpetrators, and for offenders who victimized younger adolescents. Path analysis demonstrated that perceptions of dangerousness partially mediated the relationship between experimentally manipulated predictor variables and recommended sentence length, providing partial support for attribution theory.
... their second deviant behaviour) of being caring and law-abiding citizens (Deering & Mellor, 2009;Kirkwood, 2003;Nagel & Hagan, 1983;Spohn & Spears, 1997;Shields & Cochran, 2020); therefore, female offenders who appear before the courts are more likely to be punitively sanctioned than males who have been sentenced for the same crime. To date, researchers who have examined sentencing outcomes for female and male criminal offenders have found little evidence of harsher outcomes and therefore little or no support for the double deviance perspective (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Mustard, 2001;Rodriguez et al., 2006;Shields & Cochran, 2020;Steffensmeier et al., 1993). ...
... With the exception of the Deering and Mellor study, research examining disparity in sentence outcomes for FSOs compared to MSOs have been analysed through a solely quantitative lens. It has long been recognised that qualitative methodology is also needed to understand any subjective differences in the way that judges perceive and describe case-relevant factors and whether these perceptions differ as a function of the offender's gender (Embry & Lyons, 2012). In the present study, we make a unique contribution to this research field by conducting a descriptive qualitative analysis of Beeby et al.'s (2020) matched cases to determine if there were differences in the way the judges subjectively perceived or described the sexual offending, or in the way in which judges selectively focused on case-relevant factors for FSOs compared to MSOs. ...
... These additional noted differences (e.g. females viewed as more depraved or cruel) fit with the double deviance or evil woman theory (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Kirkwood, 2003;Mustard, 2001;Nagel & Hagan, 1983;Rodriguez, et al., 2006;Spohn & Spears, 1997;Steffensmeier et al., 1993). A recent study by Damiris, et al., (2021) also reported similar findings in relation to violent female sexual offenders being described by judges in an emotive way and FSOs being seen as particularly heinous. ...
There is growing recognition that females engage in harmful sexual behaviour that is similar in severity and type to males. Existing research, however, suggests that there is a bias towards leniency in judicial systems for female sexual offenders (FSOs) in comparison to male sexual offenders (MSOs). Specifically, FSOs receive shorter sentences than do MSOs and are less likely to be sentenced to prison. The majority of research examining disparity in sentence outcomes for FSOs have been analysed through a quantitative lens. Qualitative methodology is also needed to understand any subjective differences in the way that judges perceive case-relevant factors and whether these perceptions differ as a function of the offender’s gender. The present study is a qualitative study that examined judges’ perceptions and descriptions of FSO compared to MSO in 10 matched cases of sexual offending. The study found that although there were many similarities in how judges perceived FSO compared to MSO, there were also unique differences that could explain more lenient sentences for FSOs (i.e. the vulnerability, poor mental health and adverse backgrounds of FSOs). Other unique differences found were that judges’ perception of FSOs behaviour was described as depraved and cruel, whereas MSOs similar behaviour was not described in such an emotive way. The present study provides additional insight into the reasons for a bias towards leniency for FSOs. In particular, it points towards judicial focus on particular personal circumstances that are seen as relevant in sentencing FSOs but not for MSOs.
... Going against this morality has been perceived as having a negative impact on society. Selective chivalry specifies that lenient treatment is only afforded to women who conform to traditional stereotypes of femininity, including stereotypical criminality (Anderson, 1976;Embry & Lyons, 2012;Van Denend, 2010). Van Denend (2010) explains that judgments of female offenders are affected by cultural narratives that link women to motherhood. ...
... Women who do not conform to the good mother idealization are not afforded lenient treatment. Women involved in drug crime were viewed as inconsistent with traditional female roles (Embry & Lyons, 2012) and contributing to a social ill (Bird & Eversman, 2017). ...
... Beyond this, the negative perception of women involved in drug crime and their association with the breakdown of morality in society (Embry & Lyons, 2012) suggests that women involved in drug crime would be treated more harshly than men, resulting in a greater increase in the incarceration rate for women relative to men. Thus, a third hypothesis is proposed: ...
Prior literature suggests that drug legislation in the late 1970s and 1980s caused the rapid increase in the female incarceration rate. Empirical investigations focused on the female incarceration rate specifically may provide important information to further our understanding of the factors that contributed to this increase. The purpose of this study is to determine how much of the change in the female incarceration rate in New York can be attributed to the introduction of the 1973 Rockefeller Drug Laws. These laws were introduced prior to most war on drugs legislation and, therefore, serve as a unique case study for this type of investigation.
... While some view the justice system's reaction as reasonable, critics charge that even when FSOs are arrested, the system treats them differently compared with male sexual offenders. Embry & Lyons (2012) reported that sentencing disparities exist between female and male sexual offenders. They revealed that FSOs receive substantially less prison time compared with men who engage in the same behavior. ...
... In doing so, they researched patriarchy, chivalry, and the evil woman hypotheses (Koons-Witt, 2002;Rodriguez et al., 2006). Most research supports that women offenders receive a different brand of justice from the system because it feels a need to protect women including those who sexually abuse children and adolescents (Embry & Lyons, 2012). Consequently, the justice system holds women to a lesser degree of blameworthiness than it does men, even when they engage in similar sexual offenses (Embry & Lyons, 2012). ...
... Most research supports that women offenders receive a different brand of justice from the system because it feels a need to protect women including those who sexually abuse children and adolescents (Embry & Lyons, 2012). Consequently, the justice system holds women to a lesser degree of blameworthiness than it does men, even when they engage in similar sexual offenses (Embry & Lyons, 2012). Moreover, other research also supports that the chivalry hypothesis explains why women are more likely to receive a lesser punishment. ...
Scholars, researchers, and law enforcement officers examining child sexual abuse cases are beginning to report that adolescent and adult females are responsible for a growing number of sexual offenses. This new revelation may reveal that justice officials and many in the lay public do not view the gravity of female and male sexual offending equally. This investigation reveals that female sex offending is more common than traditionally thought and is a neglected criminal justice issue. It also shows that until society recognizes that sex offending is not a gendered crime, more cases will escape the attention of the criminal justice system.
... The prevailing conceptualization of pedophilia has been predominantly concentrated on male perpetrators, negating the involvement of females in this [28]. Incidents of female perpetration have often been characterized as not due to sexual arousal but because of unclear boundaries, hating her own body, acting out on the child who could be perceived as an extension of the perpetrator herself, and surprisingly, female sexual offenders (FSO) often receive less severe sentences than male offenders [28][29][30]. ...
... Thus, CSA victims might never be able to disclose and get a resolution [61]. Studies [26, [28][29][30] have revealed that the gender of the perpetrator is the identifying factor in the profile of CSA victims; thus, clinical intervention should be selectively provided on that basis. CSA particularly perpetrated by females, might be difficult to identify as it takes place in an apparently intact family environment with little or no visible evidence of struggle or anguish. ...
Conventionally, women are conceived as practicing high-standard domestic and child-care planning where the possibility of being sexually abusive seems to be a far-fetched reality. Therefore, very little information is available about the pathological predisposition behind female perpetration, as literature also portrays a less cohesive picture. Recent offender typologies recognized that females often perpetrate alone or peripherally in a pair with another male. Whether perpetration is coerced by the male or not, females are certainly physically and sexually abusive, even often facilitating abuse. Abundant evidence of self-reported sexual aggression against males, childhood sexual abuse history, greater exposure to sexual abuse during childhood, physical and emotional abandonment, mental illness, parental divorce, or having unmarried parents often contributes to future sexual offenses upon children. The chapter aims to explain all the nuances regarding contributing psychopathological factors, gender role stereotypes, and factors behind female sexual offenses.
... This challenges the belief that female sex offenders receive preferential treatment in statutory rape cases and supports the idea that both male and female teacher sex offenders are viewed as equally punishable by the public. Future research should aim to identify the reasons behind these attitude differences and explore ways to improve attitudes towards both male and female offenders (Embry and Lyons 2012;Gakhal and Brown 2011). ...
... This reinforces chivalric views of female vulnerability and weakness (Herzog and Oreg 2008;Rodriguez et al. 2006). Male teachers, on the other hand, are portrayed as having more agency over their actions (Embry and Lyons 2012). This may contribute to underreporting of these crimes. ...
Concerns about sexual relationships between teachers and students have recently grown, with research limited about the perpetration of these crimes by female educators. In light of research gaps and theoretical controversy, this study aimed to investigate the influence of perpetrator gender on public perceptions and media portrayals of male and female sex offenders in the context of teacher-student sexual relationships. Utilizing a mixed methods design, 167 participants were presented with a vignette depicting either a male or female teacher convicted of statutory rape and completed either the attitudes towards male or female sex offender scales. Secondly, online newspaper portrayals of case studies were examined using qualitative content analysis. Findings revealed a significant difference in scores, whereby participants demonstrated more negative attitudes towards male sex offenders. The content analysis revealed three themes: accountability, perceptions of harm, and gender roles. Although portrayals of male teacher sex offenders were generally more negative, female abusers were described as equally damaging and deserving of punishment. It was concluded that gender bias that favors female perpetrators is infiltrated within public attitudes. Implications include the value of intervention and prevention strategies and improving victim reporting rates.
... The lack of awareness regarding the role of females as sex offenders is disquieting, as statistics indicate that they perform a significant proportion of those crimes. Global statistics indicate that 4%-5% of all sexual offenses are committed by women (Gannon and Cortoni, 2010;Embry and Lyons, 2012). In the United States, thousands of female sex offenders (FSOs) are arrested each year, indicating that females commit sexual crimes just as much as males, with recent statistics establishing 8.1% of forcible sexual offense arrests from women (Williams and Bierie, 2015). ...
... The societal idealization and perception of women as nurturing, loving, and harmless further contributes to the understudying and underreporting of such crimes (Courtois, 1988;Davies, 2013). In addition, FSOs receive less severe sentences compared with their male counterparts (Embry and Lyons, 2012). Evidence concerning the low reporting rate for female child sex abuse only perpetuates the myth that it is a less serious problem and that it is subtle, gentle, and ''harmless'' (Hetherton, 1999;Gakhal and Brown, 2011;Frei, 2008). ...
Objectives
This review examined the existing empirical literature on trauma histories of female sex offenders to investigate the effects of childhood sexual abuse along with other traumatic experiences that lead to developmental traumas.
Material and methods
For this, validated questionnaire were used; we searched for articles in PsycInfo, PubMed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE. The inclusion criteria comprised studies that employed the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and that were published in English from 2007–2020. To direct this review, the articles’ selection followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews guidelines. After reviewing 2039 abstracts, 78 met the criteria; after removing duplicates, 12 articles were assessed for eligibility. Eventually, four abstracts that used the validated questionnaires were considered admissible and their methods involved non-randomized convenience samples of sex offenders either in prison or in treatment programs.
Results
Statistics on female sex offender prosecutions were relatively low compared to victim reports of sexual abuse committed by females. Compared with males, sexual abuse perpetrated by females had more damaging effects on the victims. The results indicated that childhood sexual abuse history was the most common type of maltreatment, along with physical abandonment, emotional abandonment, mental illness at home, and family instability due to divorced or unmarried parents, contributing to the development of sex offending behaviors.
Conclusion
Future research should address policies that allow for early intervention and treatments that target the understanding of maltreatment histories to ameliorate the child sexual abuse effects in life's early stages.
... The universality of lenient treatment on female offenders has also been tested across varied stages of criminal justice procedures. This preferential treatment is found at the stages of arrest (Hamilton & Worthen, 2011), case referral (Shernock & Russell, 2012), case diversion (Nowakowski & Mattern, 2014), pretrial release (Pinchevsky & Steiner, 2016), and sentencing (Embry & Lyons Jr., 2012). Although the gender gap in these procedures has been found across these stages, the magnitudes of the gaps vary. ...
... Pinchevsky & Steiner, 2016), and sentencing (e.g. Embry & Lyons Jr., 2012); limited efforts have been devoted to exploring whether women receive lenient treatment during the correction stage. If women are proposed to receive lenient punishment at every stage of the criminal justice procedures, justice actors in correction agencies should bear similar dispositions as judges and prosecutors and thus more likely to release females from prison or approve parole application. ...
While numerous studies have unpacked gender-based disparities in judges’ sentencing decisions, few studies have examined the gender gap in correction settings. This study examines inmates’ gender gap in actual incarceration length with the effects of criminal propensities adjusted. Based on a sample including both petty and serious offenders, we use survival analysis to examine whether female inmates had shorter incarcerations to similarly situated males. We use Wilcoxon signed-rank tests to examine whether males and females who had indistinguishable lengths of incarcerations also demonstrated comparable levels of criminal propensities. Findings illustrate that the lenient treatment for females is conditional rather than universal. Females had shorter incarceration lengths only when they committed less severe crimes. Additionally, among offenders who committed less severe crimes, females demonstrated significantly lower levels of criminal propensity than males. However, among serious offenders, neither a gender gap in incarceration length nor gender disparity in criminal propensities was found.
... Another explanation for favorable treatment of women in comparison to men regarding sentencing decisions is the "chivalry hypothesis," rooted in perceptions of traditional gender roles (Doerner & Demuth, 2014;Embry & Lyons, 2012;Farnworth & Teske, Jr, 1995;Rodriguez et al., 2006). The hypothesis purports that women are treated relatively more compassionately by court actors because the criminal justice system (historically composed of men) has a more sympathetic and paternal attitude toward women (Curran, 1983). ...
... Although counter to American ideals of equal justice, the influence of extralegal factors on the decisions of criminal justice actors are well documented (Ahola et al., 2009;Albonetti, 1997;Cramer, 1999;Doerner & Demuth, 2014;Embry & Lyons, 2012;Meaux et al., 2018;Spohn & Beichner, 2000). Systemic, selective enforcement of the law based on extralegal factors has long shaped disparities in decisions about legal processes and outcomes, from granting bail to sentencing. ...
Generally, women receive more lenient treatment by the criminal justice system compared to men. Prior research on how gender shaped prosecutorial decision-making and sentencing outcomes has focused on conventional forms of crime, while less is known about how it operates in terrorism-related cases. This is a critical gap in a growing body of research on justice disparities given that women continue to make up a significant portion of terrorism defendants in the U.S. Utilizing data from the American Terrorism Study, we seek to answer how legal and extralegal case attributes of federal terrorism cases vary across gender, how gender shapes federal terrorism case outcomes, and how combinations of relevant case attributes uniquely impact court outcomes for males and females.
... Many researchers have examined the much more visible stage of the criminal justice system-sentencing, while fewer have explored sexbased disparities at pretrial stages, such as arrest (Katz & Spohn, 1995;Kruttschnitt, 1984). Embry and Lyons (2012) found that even after sentencing guidelines were implemented to ensure equality in sentencing, men still received disproportionately more severe sentences than women who commit sexual offenses. Sandler and Freeman (2011) found that among 138,000 arrestees in New York state, women arrested for a sexual offense were not significantly different from men who were arrested for a sexual offense with regard to whether the offense resulted in a conviction, yet women were significantly more likely than men to receive probation as compared to an incarceration sentence. ...
... Conversely, the evil woman hypothesis, also referred to as selective chivalry, argues that women who commit a sexual offense will be treated more harshly when they step outside prescribed gender roles (Chesney-Lind, 1978;Goulette et al., 2015;Rodriguez et al., 2006;Tillyer et al., 2015;Vaughan et al., 2015). It is assumed that a woman will receive a longer sentence the more she acts outside of traditional gender roles (Embry & Lyons, 2012). In line with the evil woman hypothesis, women who commit characteristically unfeminine acts, such as a violent crime and sexual abuse, maybe "treated much more severely than their counterparts whose illegal activity conforms to the standards of womanhood" (Grabe et al., 2006, p. 139). ...
This study examined the effect of an offender's sex (male/female) on whether sexual-offense incidents reported to law enforcement culminated in an arrest. Two hypotheses, chivalry and evil woman, are relied upon and suggest that the probability of arrest differs for women and men, yet in differing directions. The chivalry hypothesis suggests women are treated more leniently than men and, therefore, less likely to be arrested. The evil woman hypothesis, however, suggests the opposite: Women are treated more harshly than men and, therefore, more likely to be arrested. Seven years of National Incident-based Reporting System [NIBRS] data were relied upon (National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, 2010-2016, National Incident-based Reporting System: Extract Files); all of the reported sexual-offense incidents committed by women were included, along with a matched sample of reported sexual-offense incidents committed by men, culminating in a sample of 22,744. Overall, women were 42% significantly less likely than men to be arrested when controlling for other known offense, offender, and victim characteristics. The odds for women to be arrested increased, however, when specific offender demographics, offense characteristics, and victim characteristics were taken into account. The implications of these findings are discussed in regard to their application of the chivalry and evil woman hypotheses.
... Blackwell, Holleran, & Finn, 2008), particularly for sex crimes (e.g. Embry & Lyons, 2012). ...
... First, it reinforces that gendered punitive attitudes are influenced by a variety of contexts. In our study, adult females were given more lenient sentences than males for sex offenses, which supports prior research (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Sandler & Freeman, 2011;Shields & Cochran, 2019). However, such leniency is not reflected in the juvenile justice literature, which demonstrates that adolescent females are punished significantly harsher than adolescent males for similar offenses during pre-sentencing, sentencing, and post-release (Beger & Hoffman, 1998;Carr, Hudson, Hanks, & Hunt, 2008). ...
The public holds stereotypical beliefs about sex crimes, its perpetrators, and its victims, which may influence punitive attitudes toward individuals convicted of sex offenses (ICSOs). Using a nationally representative vignette survey experiment, we examined whether this punitivity toward ICSOs was influenced by deviations from the stereotypical sex crime case. We also explored whether these influences differed between adult and child victim crimes, and whether they differed between sentencing and post-release supervision policy preferences. We found that the respondents consistently recommended more lenient punishments for female perpetrators and harsher punishments for child victim crimes. A child victim rendered other characteristics less relevant. Despite some similarities between sentencing and post-release policy decisions, male victims elicited longer prison sentences as punishment, while perpetrators with stranger victims yielded more support for post-release policies meant to protect society. Overall, while punitivity toward ICSOs was generally high, the most punitivity was reserved for male perpetrators and child victim crimes.
... Gender disparity in sentencing outcomes is widely studied in the United States. The vast majority of empirical works suggest that women received more favorable sentencing decisions than men in comparable crimes (Crew 1991;Embry and Phillip M. Lyons 2012;Doerner and Demuth 2014;Daly and Bordt 1995;Farnworth and Raymond H. C. Teske 1995). Scholars have also suggested that such disparities in sentencing vary across crimes; for example, the gender effect is inconclusive in more violent crimes (Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee 2006;Nagel and Hagan 1983;Koons-Witt et al. 2014). ...
The language used by US courtroom actors in criminal trials has long been studied for biases. However, systematic studies for bias in high-stakes court trials have been difficult, due to the nuanced nature of bias and the legal expertise required. Large language models offer the possibility to automate annotation. But validating the computational approach requires both an understanding of how automated methods fit in existing annotation workflows and what they really offer. We present a case study of adding a computational model to a complex and high-stakes problem: identifying gender-biased language in US capital trials for women defendants. Our team of experienced death-penalty lawyers and NLP technologists pursue a three-phase study: first annotating manually, then training and evaluating computational models, and finally comparing expert annotations to model predictions. Unlike many typical NLP tasks, annotating for gender bias in months-long capital trials is complicated, with many individual judgment calls. Contrary to standard arguments for automation that are based on efficiency and scalability, legal experts find the computational models most useful in providing opportunities to reflect on their own bias in annotation and to build consensus on annotation rules. This experience suggests that seeking to replace experts with computational models for complex annotation is both unrealistic and undesirable. Rather, computational models offer valuable opportunities to assist the legal experts in annotation-based studies.
... Gender disparity in sentencing outcomes is widely studied in the United States. The vast majority of empirical works suggested that women received more favorable sentencing decisions than men in comparable crimes (Crew 1991;Embry and Phillip M. Lyons 2012;Doerner and Demuth 2014;Daly and Bordt 1995;Farnworth and Raymond H. C. Teske 1995). Scholars have also suggested that such disparity in sentencing varies across crimes, for example, the effect is inconclusive in more violent crimes (Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee 2006;Nagel and Hagan 1983;Koons-Witt et al. 2014). ...
The language used by US courtroom actors in criminal trials has long been studied for biases. However, systematic studies for bias in high-stakes court trials have been difficult, due to the nuanced nature of bias and the legal expertise required. New large language models offer the possibility to automate annotation, saving time and cost. But validating these approaches requires both high quantitative performance as well as an understanding of how automated methods fit in existing workflows, and what they really offer. In this paper we present a case study of adding an automated system to a complex and high-stakes problem: identifying gender-biased language in US capital trials for women defendants. Our team of experienced death-penalty lawyers and NLP technologists pursued a three-phase study: first annotating manually, then training and evaluating computational models, and finally comparing human annotations to model predictions. Unlike many typical NLP tasks, annotating for gender bias in months-long capital trials was a complicated task that involves with many individual judgment calls. In contrast to standard arguments for automation that are based on efficiency and scalability, legal experts found the computational models most useful in challenging their personal bias in annotation and providing opportunities to refine and build consensus on rules for annotation. This suggests that seeking to replace experts with computational models is both unrealistic and undesirable. Rather, computational models offer valuable opportunities to assist the legal experts in annotation-based studies.
... Women used a variety of persuasive behaviors and psychological coercion to sexually abuse that are similar to male sex offenders (Tsopelas et al., 2011); however, men are more likely than women to be sentenced to prison and for longer terms even when considering the seriousness of the offense and age of the victim (Shields & Cochran, 2020). Gender bias in punishment is largely attributed to cultural and social perceptions of women, specifically that women lack the ability to harm and commit heinous sexual acts and that men who sexually offend pose a substantially greater risk to the community (Embry & Lyons Jr., 2012). ...
Individuals who sexually offend often engage in manipulative and coercive behavior to begin, conceal, and continue the sexual abuse of children over time, referred to as grooming behavior. The large majority of research regarding grooming behavior derives exclusively from male sex offending samples, which is problematic because male and female sex offenders vary widely in their offending patterns, motivations, and behaviors. For the present study, we examined the nature of sexual grooming and processes exhibited by a sample of 50 women convicted of sexual offenses against a child. We were guided by Craven et al. model of sexual grooming, which focuses on self, environmental, and child grooming. To date, this is the only proposed model of sexual grooming that includes self-grooming as a step in the grooming process. Data included narrative interviews with women who were arrested, convicted, and assessed for risk and community notification purposes between 2014 and 2019. We also examined interviews with victims, witnesses, and other guardians. The findings from the current study indicated that women who sexually offend utilize a variety of self, environmental, and child grooming behaviors. Self-grooming was an intricate, complex, and layered process that continued throughout the duration of the offense. Details provided by the women in our sample suggested that environmental and child grooming occurred simultaneously rather than two distinct steps. A better understanding of grooming behaviors can assist in the detection of grooming behavior, development of appropriate responses to child victims, and inform future legislation and its implementation. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
... Tiltalte skal også ha vaert involvert i mishandling av dyr. At den tiltalte var jente gjør kjønn til en mulig forklaringsfaktor i straffeutmålingen (Randa m.fl., 2012), men lite tyder på at hun ble forstått annerledes enn guttene. Hun ble kjent utilregnelig og idømt 10 års sikring. ...
Abstract Homicides are rare in Norway, and minors committing homicide are even rarer. While such offenses require a response, they also require considerations regarding the effect a prison sentence would have on the young offender. In some cases, the considerations are challenged by a perceived need to protect society from future acts of violence and harm. Thus, some of these minors are not only penalized for what they have done, but also labelled a danger. A question of relevance is how this dangerousness is assessed. This paper aims to provide historical insight into a complete selection of homicide cases from Norway in the period 1955-1982, where the offenders were all minors, many were imprisoned, and some also deemed dangerous. These cases represent society's view on children's capacity for harm over a long period.
... Most crimes defined as sex offences are committed by males and so this paper, for convenience, will refer to the perpetrators in the masculine. Also, the corrective path to which we refer here is the one used in Israel, [20,58]. ...
This paper is intended first for the formal argumentation community (see https://comma.csc.liv.ac.uk/). This community develops logics and systems modelling argumentation and dialogues. The community is in search of major applications areas for their models. One such application area e.g. is Law. The message of this paper is that there is another major application area for formal argumentation. There is an international community of sex offender therapist that is well established and well funded, and their therapy methods use (methods that can be modelled by) formal argumentation and logic. This community presents a natural application area for formal argumentation. We thus describe in this paper how the sex offender therapists work, to give the formal argumentation researcher a view of this application area. What is especially important about this application area is that in order to model it and learn from it, the formal argumentation community have to evolve their formal methods and adapt to this new application. Part of this enhancement is to modify and import certain methods from other areas of Logic e.g. from Non-Monotonic logic. The members of the formal argumentation community are not familiar, on average, with other areas of logic, and so we also describe in this paper, what we need from neighbouring logics. This makes this paper of interest also to sex offender therapist as well. They may be already familiar with their own practices, but the additional logics described will be of interest to them.
... This is a clear reflection of the myth of women's innocence. Indeed, several studies have been raising the issue of a gender gap in sentencing, proposing that a leniency effect toward women might benefit them (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Geppert, 2022;Mackelprang & Becker, 2015;Shields & Cochran, 2020). This is also in line with the results of the study by Moore and Miller-Perrin (2022) in which university students perceived the woman vignette offender as less guilty than the man perpetrator. ...
Introduction
Sexual violence (SV) perpetrated by women against men is socially dismissed and underrepresented in research. The aim of the current study was to explore the perspectives of university students (women and men) on women-perpetrated SV against men.
Methods
A total of 19 undergraduate students were presented with a vignette describing a hypothetical situation of SV and interviewed.
Results
A thematic analysis was performed, identifying four main themes: characters’ Features, sexual initiation Strategies, Consequences, and Motivations and Contexts. Participants endorsed gender stereotypes and victim-blaming narratives, but also challenged gender stereotypes and rape myths. Participants could identify violent sexual initiation strategies, could anticipate potential consequences of the abuse, and were able to imagine potential motivational and contextual factors that facilitated the abuse.
Conclusions
These results highlight the importance of providing adequate information regarding women-perpetrated SV and can inform preventative approaches targeting social norms that perpetuate the invisibility of this phenomenon. Recommendations for future research are discussed.
Policy Implications
Public policies that facilitate the training of professionals who contact with victims may help overcome the influence of rape myths that hinder appropriate intervention. Similarly, policies that support the prevention of SV in university contexts may contribute to translate the results from research into practice.
... Another example for future research is the role of attitudes in sentencing. Sentencing studies have examined whether and why women are sanctioned less harshly than men ( Embry and Lyons, 2012;Kathleen, 1994 ). The present study shows that women's badness ratings are significantly higher than those of men. ...
People's attitudes toward crimes and how they are related to gender, age, and personal values are studied here based on data from six representative surveys with altogether 14,591 respondents collected in four German cities between 1998 and 2020. The respondents rated fourteen legal offenses such as fare dodging, tax fraud, and car breaking on a “badness” scale. As predicted, women rate all offenses harsher than men and show more agreement in their ratings. As people grow older, their badness ratings rise monotonically in a decelerating way toward an upper asymptote. Exceptions are the youngest cohorts: They have relatively negative attitudes toward petty crimes (pot smoking, fare dodging), leading to initial dips in the growth curves. Personal values, in particular peoples’ striving for conservation, predict people's badness ratings, most effectively for petty crimes, and independent of gender and age. In all age and gender sub-groups, crime-specific attitudes are positively inter-correlated, showing that there is a common underlying attitude object. The structure of the badness items exhibits two dimensions, with highly similar configurations for all age and gender cohorts.
... Natural evils are things like death, disease, and home destruction. One path to look at is the evil woman conception, which notes that women often treated harsher than men in the criminal justice process, and indicates that this different treatment stems from the idea that women criminals not only violated legal boundaries, but also the perceptions of women criminals (Embry & Lyons, 2012). ...
This research highlights the theme of female evil in Rosalie Ham's novel The Dressmaker. It mainly seeks to examine the evil aspect of female as it is portrayed in the selected novel. The qualitative method is used to study the evil side of the main character. The focus is made on the psychological aspect of female evilness. Therefore, this research is psychoanalytical, and it is based on Heinz Kohut’s theory of self-psychology. Much specifically, Kohut's theory of self-psychology forms the basis of analyzing the heroine's psychological structure and her motives behind burning the city. The findings reflect that Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker embodies representations of the female evil. Moreover, this female evil is a reaction, or in a sense an act of revenge, to bullying, abuse and rejection faced by the main character in the selected novel.
... Į nusikaltusias moteris teisme gali būti žiūrima kaip į labiau socialiai pažeidžiamas, silpnesnes nei vyrai ir todėl joms gali būti skiriamos ne tokios griežtos bausmės kaip vyrams. Daugelio empirinių tyrimų rezultatai patvirtino šios teorijos prielaidas, atskleisdami, kad už skirtingo pobūdžio nusikaltimus nuteistos moterys rečiau nei vyrai nubaudžiamos laisvės atėmimu, o skirto laisvės atėmimo trukmė dažniausiai būna trumpesnė (Francis 2016;Koons-Witt et al. 2014;Embry, Lyons Jr. 2012;Spohn, Beichner 2000). ...
According to the official statistical data, in Lithuania, female offenders make up approximately 10% of the convict population and 5% of the prison population (Department of Statistics, 2022). Due to rather small numbers of women drawn into the criminal world, female offenders and their specific needs are often hardly visible to the representatives of the law enforcement and correctional system. Therefore, the punitive practices applied to female offenders as well as the social context of their criminal behavior remain understudied topics in Lithuania. The main purpose of this study is to uncover the individual characteristics and the offending circumstances of the women accused of illegal posession and distribution of drugs. Also, this study includes the analysis of the sentencing trends for female culprits of drug-related crimes. The analysis of court practice and the interviews with the sentenced women has shown that, compared to males, females had no stable source of income and had to take care of the children and other family members more often. In addition, unlike males, females did not distribute drugs in the organized criminal groups, while the additional offences were mostly related to drug abuse rather than any other complicated criminal scheme. Finally, the comparison of sentencing trends has shown that Lithuanian courts tend to be more merciful towards women as they where imposed with shorter prison sentences. This study is one of the few attempts to explore the social context of female criminal behavior which will hopefully encourage to individualize the sentences imposed to female offenders.
... It is also believed that women's criminality is often the result of their victimization, such as their destructive relationships with men or drug use (Steffensmeier and Demuth 2006, p. 246). The chivalry hypothesis also includes the concept of selective chivalry, or the evil woman thesis, that attempts to explain women's transgressions of traditional gender roles and responses to them (Embry and Lyons 2012;Spivak et al. 2014;Tillyer et al. 2015). According to this thesis, women who break the traditional gender roles are expected to receive more severe punishment for their crimes. ...
This article focuses on the structure of female and male crimes and gender disparities in sentencing in Lithuania, which present a significant gap in criminological research. Using Lithuanian court decisions on five types of offenses—murder, grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, drug distribution, and theft—we attempt to answer whether women are punished more leniently than men. Our research demonstrates that gender is a significant factor only in some sentences. Only the length of a prison sentence showed a statistically significant difference. When the importance of legal and extralegal factors in imposing prison length is compared, legal factors are found to be more significant predictors. The prison sentence length was mainly affected by the presence of a prior conviction, additional charges, and mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Although the average prison sentence for men in cases of grievous bodily harm and drug distribution was significantly longer than for women, the regression models developed for each offence type revealed that neither gender nor other extralegal factors appeared to be significant in determining the length of the prison sentence. The results allow us to argue that future research should focus more on analyzing extralegal factors and judges’ motives in discretionary sentencing decisions.
... It is well-known that females engage in sexually offending behaviours (Cortoni & Gannon, 2016;Proulx, Cortoni, Craig, & Letourneau, 2020); however, research with this specialist population is relatively scant compared to the male sexual abuse literature. This is a likely corollary of low sexual abuse perpetration rates among female sexual abusers, with academic estimates suggesting that females commit around only five percent of recorded sexual crimes (Cortoni, Hanson, & Coache, 2010;Embry & Lyons, 2012). However, despite them being so relatively few in number (compared to male perpetrators), it has become apparent in recent years that females who commit sexual offences comprise a heterogenous forensic population with unique treatment needs that separate them from their male counterparts. ...
This chapter reviews the nature and scope of female-perpetrated sexual abuse, and evaluates gender-responsive approaches. It highlights where possible implications of literature on policy and treatment, and draws necessary comparisons with the male sexual abuse literature. Psychological and clinical literature has highlighted key demographic differences between male and female perpetrators of sexual offences. In an attempt to assess the differences between males and females who engage in sexually offending behaviors, early work into female-perpetrated sexual abuse focused on reviewing demographic and personal characteristics of perpetrators. This highlighted that females who engage in illicit sexual activities constitute a heterogeneous population with distinct treatment needs. The chapter aims to offer readers insight into how best to risk assess, manage, and treat females who engage in sexually offending behaviors, while addressing misconceptions about this oft-misunderstood population. Typological research highlights that there is at least one distinct subgroup of female sexual abuser who offends in order to achieve intimacy.
... Official data suggest that rates of sexual assaults committed by females is low. Depending on the type of methodology used, women involved in sexual victimization represent between 1% and 6% of all incarcerated offenders (Cortoni et al., 2010;Embry & Lyons, 2012;Giguere & Kurt, 2007;Vandiver & Walker, 2002). However, these estimates remain unreliable, arguably due to the dark figure for sexual crimes involving females being higher than that described by the official data (Cortoni et al., 2017;Saradjian, 2010). ...
This study aims to provide a theoretically grounded analysis of the crime-commission process of solo females involved in sexual offending, using crime scripts. The sample includes 93 cases of sexual assaults perpetrated by female offenders in an extrafamilial context. Latent class analysis was used to identify the scripts involved in female sexual offending as well as to explore the relationship between each step of the crime-commission process. Also, additional variables related to victim, offender, and location characteristics were used to test the external validity of the model. Results suggest four different scripts used by females: Daytime Indoor, Coercive Outdoor, Coercive Indoor, and Nighttime Indoor. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
... Some studies used the term "selective chivalry" to denote a perspective closer to "the evil woman" hypothesis(Embry & Lyons, 2012;Rodriguez et al., 2006). Throughout the paper, we stick to the original scopes of the selective chivalry perspective. ...
The predominant theories on courtroom decision-making explain extralegal disparities with the courtroom actors’ use of stereotypes. We conducted a vignette study on a sample of judges at the Chinese National Judges College, manipulated the sex of the defendant in each vignette, then asked the subjects for the recommended sentence. The survey also contained a series of questions on the beliefs about the causes of crime, the patterns of criminal behaviors, and the effectiveness of punishment. We found that the judges recommended significantly less harsh sentences for the female homicide defendant, but recommended significantly harsher sentences for both female defrauding and drug trafficking defendants. We also found little evidence that the perception and belief variables were confounders behind the observed sex disparities.
... Most of the research is focused on sentencing outcomes in the form of incarceration decisions or sentence length (Kutateladze et al., 2014). Gender disparities in incarceration decisions were determined most frequently (Doerner and Demuth, 2010;Embry and Lyons, 2012;Freiburger, 2010;Gruhl et al., 1984;Koons-Witt et al., 2014;Spohn, 1999;Van Wingerden et al., 2016;Wermink et al., 2015), but they were not consistently found in sentence length (Daly and Tonry, 1997;Gruhl et al., 1984;Jeffries and Fletcher, 2003;Van Wingerden et al., 2016;Wermink et al., 2015). Although findings vary and some research does not identify any notable gender differences (Griffin and Wooldredge, 2006;Kruttschnitt and Savolainen, 2009;Steffensmeier et al., 1993), a meta-analysis by Bontrager et al. (2013) concluded that women are less often incarcerated and receive shorter sentences. ...
This article engages in the discussion about gender disparities in prosecutorial decision-making. Appling propensity score matching after multiple imputation on data drawn from case files, the article examines differences in the prosecutorial treatment of male and female defendants in cases of minor theft in Germany. The matched data reveal significant differences between genders in the prosecutorial conclusion of proceedings: whereas dismissals because of other imposed sentences are more frequently imposed on male defendants, disposals with penalty fees are more common for female defendants. Hence, contrary to existing literature, the present study reveals harsher prosecutorial treatment of women because they have to pay penalty fees more frequently. The findings are contextualized with the focal concern hypothesis, which suggests that stereotypes influence decision-making in criminal proceedings. Together with the determination that women are more likely to pay fines or penalty fees completely and on time, this leads to the assumption that efficiency considerations by prosecutors influence their decision and make the imposition of penalty fees more attractive from an economic point of few.
... Similarly, Gostin (2000) contends this combined effort uses multiple strategies that addresses all aspects of female sex abuse. Third, Embry & Lyons (2012) revealed male sex offenders received sentences between 6% and 31% longer than their female counterparts. While studies indicate gender disparity between female and male sex offenders due to FSOs receiving lighter sentences (i.e., the female has traditionally been viewed as a nurturer, not a sex offender), just as the justice system is able to punish male sex offenders, it should equally mete out punishment to FSOs. ...
The idea that females can engage in sexually predatory behavior against children and adolescence is difficult to convey to the lay pubic since most of society believes the notion defies conventional ways of viewing the gendered nature and roles that women traditionally perform. Despite this, scholars and researchers examining child sexual abuse are beginning to report on silent offenders (women and young females) and their victimizations that have been largely ignored by criminal justice personnel who are responsible for holding sex offenders accountable. We argue that female sex offending is more common than believed and is both a criminal justice and a public health issue. We also argue that until society recognizes that sex offending is not a gendered crime, more cases will escape the attention of both criminal justice and public health systems that are in positions to punish and treat where appropriate.
... evidence that this gendered sentence leniency persists for a range of crimes, with female defendants receiving more lenient sentences when convicted of either violent (Embry & Lyons, 2012;Fridel, 2019) or nonviolent crimes (e.g., property-, drug-, and theft-related offenses; McKimmie & Masser, 2010;Ryon, 2013). ...
Extra-legal biases have an undue effect on legal proceedings, warranting explorations of gender bias in the courtroom to promote and maintain just verdicts. We used an experimentally manipulated mock court transcript of an intimate partner homicide, in which the defendant has been victimized by intimate partner violence. We explore whether hostile and benevolent sexism moderate the decisions of mock jurors. Men and women mock jurors (N = 220) responded to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory before being randomly allocated to read a transcript of either a female or male defendant, and then responding to five sentence outcome variables. Hostile and benevolent sexism moderated several sentencing outcome variables, across a range of male and female juror and defendant gender combinations, suggesting these forms of sexism are consequential in driving forensic gender biases. This study also contributes to the literature suggesting that male victims of female-perpetrated intimate partner violence are systemically disadvantaged in courtroom processes.
... Although there is no consensus about whether sex is a differential variable in sentencing (Embry and Lyons 2012), evidence suggests that women who kill are positioned as distant from hegemonic gender stereotypes and are treated more harshly in courts than men who kill their wives (Morrissey 2003). As Seal (2010) has explained, these women raise questions about the alleged masculine/feminine gender binary by breaking the norms of traditional femininity, such as nurturance, gentleness and social conformity. ...
This article seeks to analyse the paradox of freedom and imprisonment, reflecting on the connections between and nuances of intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) and women’s imprisonment in the Global South, particularly in Perú. The story follows Maria, a woman serving a 14-year sentence for the homicide of her husband, an act she committed after experiencing 20 years of psychological and physical abuse. I have chosen to focus on her ambivalence towards her experience of IPVA, using Goffman’s (1961) concept of the ‘total institution’; I suggest that Maria was living under a patriarchal and symbolic total institution, a prison-like home (Avni 1991). Following this, while imprisoned for the homicide of her husband, Maria was physically incapacitated in a co-governed, patriarchal, nation-state prison. Nevertheless, simultaneously, in this custodial setting, she found a semi-autonomous path to reinforce her sense of agency and to construct interpersonal relationships that have enabled her to question the preceding patriarchal norms.
Research on sentencing decisions has found female offenders are often sentenced more leniently than male offenders. However, mixed findings have prompted researchers to argue that other factors, such as the offence type and gender‐role attitudes of the decision‐maker, may also play a role. This study is a loose replication of previous research conducted with a Turkish sample, to establish whether gender and gender‐role attitudes can predict sentencing decisions in a UK sample, and if there is an interaction effect of these variables, for three different crimes. Participants included 143 University students and members of the public between the ages of 18–64, who were randomly assigned to either the male or female offender condition. Three vignettes were presented, and participants rated their level of agreement that the offender should be incarcerated and recommended a sentence length. Gender‐role attitudes were also measured using the Sex‐Roles Egalitarianism Scale and on average the sample had strong egalitarian attitudes. Neither gender nor gender‐role attitudes were found to be significant predictors of sentencing decisions, and there was no significant interaction effect. Findings were not consistent with those in the original study which is likely due to the UK endorsing greater gender equality and having more egalitarian attitudes. Limitations associated with the sample and use of vignettes highlight the importance of continued research into gender‐based sentencing, and there are important implications for judicial training to help reduce the influence of personal biases in the courtroom.
Perceptions of female offenders are often shaped by stereotypes utilized by the media. While stereotypes provide easy heuristics for society to use to conceptualize offending committed by women, the consequences of these mental shortcuts can subsequently affect sentencing and incarceration and hinder the ability of female offenders to receive gender-based rehabilitation necessary to prevent recidivism. Volume 2 of Perceptions of Female Offenders underscores the importance of social and news media in shaping our perceptions and reinforcing biases. We further address the disparities in sentencing female offenders and the unique challenges these women face, such as accessing legal representation, lack of awareness about resources, and limited availability of gender-responsive services. Lastly, we will go on to discuss the impact of the carceral system on female offenders, delving into the common struggles this population faces (e.g., increased adverse childhood experiences among other forms of trauma) as well as cover the discrete challenges women of color and trans women endure while imprisoned.
Women have historically been viewed as incapable of committing sex crimes because of their femininity. Very few individuals envision a female offender when they consider a sex crime. Female offenders, as a result, are often excluded in criminological research. Recent findings, however, reveal that girls and women do commit sex crimes, including forcible rape, statutory rape, and child molestation, among other sex offenses. Societal preconceptions continue to perpetuate the myth that women are incapable of such crimes. This is the type of thinking that directed researchers who first studied female sex offenders to wrongly assume all girls and women who committed sex crimes were victims, rather than perpetrators. This entry provides an overview of recent research findings regarding sex crimes committed by girls and women.
Research consistently shows that, on the whole, women are sentenced more leniently than men. Chief among the theoretical explanations for this phenomenon is the chivalry/paternalism perspective, which asserts that women are treated more leniently than men because they are viewed as weak and in need of protection. We discuss this perspective, its empirical support, as well as alternative theories and future directions for research.
Estudos no campo da psicologia forense confirmam que o crime tem origem multicausal, razão pela qual é essencial estudar os fatores de risco de forma abrangente. Há um nível mais alto de perigo criminal associado a um transtorno mental. Propõe-se como objectivo deste estudo determinar a existência de diferenças na prática de delitos penais em função da presença ou não de um distúrbio mental; bem como na avaliação das características da personalidade em crimes de violência de género e em função do sexo e da idade. Participaram 127 sujeitos (X̄ = 39.26 anos, DP = 11.880) de uma amostra forense cuja avaliação foi realizada entre 2010 e 2020. Como principais resultados, confirmou-se a existência de diferenças estatisticamente significativas de comissão criminal na amostra forense em papel do sexo e do transtorno nesse tipo de avaliação. Os homens foram acusados de um maior número de crimes, com exceção de violência doméstica. Pessoas com e sem transtornos mentais foram associadas a diferentes tipos de crimes, com diferenças entre os diferentes grupos de transtornos. Além disso, foi encontrada a implicação de fatores intrínsecos da personalidade nos perpetradores da violência de gênero. Destaca-se a conveniência de aprofundar o estudo dos fatores envolvidos no comportamento criminoso em relação aos possíveis diagnósticos de saúde mental e transtorno de personalidade.
For individuals with a history of sexual offending, adolescence has been highlighted as a critical period for intervention, and professional attributions’ have been shown to impact the efficacy of such interventions. The purpose of this review was to systematically identify and critically review studies, which look at professionals working with adolescents with a history of sexual offending (HSO), to explore possible factors that may influence professional attributions, to provide a starting point for future research. Four papers were selected for the systematic review according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Eight factors emerged that indicated relevance towards professional attributions: professionals’ (1) experience, (2) training, (3) personal history, (4) degree of psychological knowledge, (5) ethnicity and (6) gender; and the adolescent’s (7) age and (8) personal history. Directions for future research are discussed, along with the importance of formulation and training in forensic practice.
For individuals with a history of sexual offending, adolescence has been highlighted as a critical period for intervention, and professional attributions’ have been shown to impact the efficacy of such interventions. The purpose of this review was to systematically identify and critically review studies, which look at professionals working with adolescents with a history of sexual offending (HSO), to explore possible factors that may influence professional attributions, to provide a starting point for future research. Four papers were selected for the systematic review according to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Eight factors emerged that indicated relevance towards professional attributions: professionals’ (1) experience, (2) training, (3) personal history, (4) degree of psychological knowledge, (5) ethnicity and (6) gender; and the adolescent’s (7) age and (8) personal history. Directions for future research are discussed, along with the importance of formulation and training in forensic practice.
This chapter examines three criminological perspectives through a gender lens. The first part is dedicated to crime and gender. This chapter presents official data of reported and convicted persons in European countries, discussing crime trends and the different involvement of sexes in certain criminal offences. Further, this chapter points to possible differences in the ethology of crime from a gender perspective at three levels: individual; family, and social. The second section deals with gender and criminal victimization, with special attention dedicated to issues of domestic violence and sexual crimes. The third section of this chapter analyses the penal policy of the courts. Data is presented on sentencing practices in European countries, with an emphasis on certain criminal offences. Besides data on imprisonment, attention is paid to other penal sanctions. This section of the text further explains possible factors related to the different sentencing of women and men. They are divided into two categories: the first is those mainly related to socio-economic characteristics and crime committed; the second is those that reflect courts as gender institutions. Finally, this chapter gives explanations of different treatments of trans offenders in the criminal justice system.
Parental incarceration has negative effects on children’s educational outcomes. Past studies have only analyzed, and therefore only treated as consequential, parental incarceration that occurs during childhood rather than prenatally. Such analyses that emphasize the importance only of events that occur during one’s lifetime are common in life course studies. This paper introduces an “entwined life events” perspective, which argues that certain events are so consequential to multiple persons’ lives that they should be analyzed as events within multiple independent life courses; parental incarceration, whenever it occurs, is entwined across and shapes both parents’ and children’s lives. Drawing on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find that parental incarceration, both prenatal and during childhood, significantly influences children’s academic ability measures and years of completed schooling. Our results show heterogeneous effects by children’s race. We find that the absolute magnitude of parental incarceration effect estimates is largest for White children relative to estimates for Black and Hispanic children. At the same time, outcome levels tend to be poorer for Black and Hispanic children with parental incarceration experience. We explain this racial heterogeneity as confounded by the many other social disadvantages that non-White children encounter, resulting in the individual effect of parental incarceration not being extremely disruptive to their academic growth.
Madalena Duarte e Teresa Pizarro Beleza (coord.), Desafios feministas ao Direito: resistências e possibilidades, APEM. Porto: Edições Afrontamento. ISSN 0874-5560; eISSN 2184-0385. "Neste 45.º número da ex æquo dedicamos o dossier temático aos Desafios feministas ao Direito: resistências e possibilidades. A sua coordenação esteve a cargo de Madalena Duarte (Faculdade de Economia e Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal), e Teresa Pizarro Beleza, (NOVA School of Law, Lisboa, Portugal). (...). O dossier temático, que agrupa a maioria dos textos que compõem o presente número, não podia ser mais oportuno, num momento em que sobram ataques aos direitos reprodutivos e sexuais das mulheres sob a forma de legislação antiaborto, em vários países, ou a contestação à sua legalização noutros, em que registamos recuos ou objeções à educação para a cidadania nas escolas, e em que vemos decisões de tribunais que promovem a despenalização de agressores que infligem maus tratos e abusos sexuais a mulheres e meninas. Os desafios feministas, teóricos e metodológicos, ao Direito têm denunciado a ilegitimidade que se esconde por detrás da fachada da neutralidade e da racionalidade, conseguindo assim produzir ilegitimidade sociológica e nor- mativa às leis e à sua aplicação. As lentes feministas do Direito têm vindo a reivindicar visões alternativas da justiça, hegemonizadas pelas conceções de legislaturas discriminatórias, de juízes e de outros agentes do campo judiciário. Os textos integrados no presente dossier não se limitam aos efeitos negativos que os campos jurídico e judicial têm sobre as mulheres ou sobre as comuni- dades LGBTQIA+; alargam as abordagens a experiências particulares relativas ao ensino e à mudança organizacional".
Si bien los jueces deben tomar sus decisiones con total imparcialidad, se ha comprobado que a la hora de adoptarlas se ven influidos por cuestiones extralegales como son sus vivencias personales o los estereotipos sociales. En este sentido, existen numerosas investigaciones, sobre todo en el ámbito anglosajón, que analizan si el sexo de la persona acusada de haber cometido un delito influye en las decisiones judiciales. La mayoría llega a la conclusión de que las mujeres suelen recibir un trato más benévolo por parte de los jueces que los hombres, lo que se traduce en condenas menos severas para ellas. Sin embargo, no existe consenso sobre los motivos que explican esta diferencia de trato. El objetivo de este trabajo es doble: revisar el conocimiento científico disponible sobre sentencing y género; y analizar las razones que explican la disparidad judicial entre hombres y mujeres.
Grilo, M. e Poiares, N., Mulheres e Desvio: Crimes Sexuais e Magistratura Judicial, ex aequo, 45, Madalena Duarte e Teresa Pizarro Beleza (coord.), Desafios feministas ao Direito: resistências e possibilidades, pp. 65-82, APEM. Porto: Edições Afrontamento. ISSN 0874-5560; eISSN 2184-0385 (Scopus e WoS). No presente artigo são testadas as teses do galanteio e da mulher demoníaca de forma a determinar se o sexo do/a agressor/a é um dos fatores que influencia o modo como os/as profissionais judiciais abordam os crimes sexuais, nomeadamente contra menores. Nesta investigação, de natureza exploratória e explicativa, recolhemos os dados através da análise comparativa de nove acórdãos dos tribunais e de um inquérito por questionário que contou com 430 participantes. À semelhança daquilo que é comummente sugerido na literatura científica, conclui-se que as mulheres que cometem crimes sexuais são tratadas de forma mais benevolente e que o seu papel de mãe é um dos fatores que influencia esse tratamento. Palavras-chave: Mulher criminosa, violência sexual, tese do galanteio, tese da mulher demoníaca, magistratura. Abstract Women and Deviance: Sexual crimes and magistrates In this article we aim to test the chivalry thesis and the evil woman thesis in order to determine if the offender's gender has an influence on how legal professionals respond to sexual crimes, specifically against minors. For this exploratory and explanatory research study, we collected data through a comparative analysis of 9 court decisions and a questionnaire survey that involved the responses of 430 participants. Similarly to what is commonly suggested in the literature, in our study we conclude that women who perpetrate sexual crimes are treated more leniently, and that their role as mothers is one of the factors that influence such treatment.
Although women have made dramatic gains toward equality with men over the past century, this progress has occurred alongside tremendous growth in U.S. incarceration rates. Extending prior research on sex differences in offending, we turn our attention to punishment by exploring how gender equality in education, work, and politics is associated with disparities in annual prison admissions. Using pooled cross‐sectional data for U.S. states from 1983 to 2010, we conduct a series of fixed‐effects regressions to estimate the ratio of female‐to‐male annual prison admission rates, as well as sex‐specific rates, disaggregated by violent, property, and drug crimes. We find partial support for the ameliorative hypothesis, which predicts that increasing gender equality will decrease female incarceration rates relative to male rates. For one of our three measures of gender equality—the sex gap in educational attainment—we find that greater equality is associated with a widening of the sex gap in incarceration rates, particularly for property offenses. We explore the implications of these findings in relation to existing theories of gender, crime, and punishment.
The book conceptualises gender-differentiated trends and practices of criminal
behaviour and punishment. It examines the general features of punishment and
the peculiarities and experiences of imprisoned women and women serving community sentences in Lithuania. We follow the assumption that when analysing women’s criminal behaviour and their personal experiences in the criminal justice system, using the interpretive frameworks applicable to men’s crimes is not sufficient. Therefore, a rich array of contemporary criminological and gender studies literature, interdisciplinary approaches and multifaceted empirical data are the basis of our analysis which trace women’s experiences from the imposition of punishment to serving community and imprisonment sentences.
From media attention to legislative actions, individuals convicted of sex offenses are often perceived as dangerous and a threat to society. Previous research, however, has demonstrated that perceived dangerousness is gender-specific, often minimizing culpability for women convicted of sex offenses. Consequently, previous research on sentencing outcomes of these individuals have largely been male-only samples, leaving a gap in the literature as it pertains to females convicted of sex offenses. The current study sought to fill this gap by examining the impact that those convicted, victims, and offense characteristics had on sentencing outcomes for women convicted of sex offenses. We analyzed a sample of 262 females convicted of a sex offense in a Southern state. The results demonstrated that official case characteristics, along with victim characteristics, play an influential role in the judicial decision to impose an incarceration sentence.
This research examines factors associated with departures from sentencing guidelines for a sample of individuals convicted of sexual offenses in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2015 ( N = 26,093). We contribute to the literature on the sentencing of these cases by considering whether the impact of individual and contextual factors is conditioned by the type of sexual offense being sentenced (e.g., assaultive, child pornography, failure to comply with registration). Bayesian multilevel multinomial logit models suggested a number of legal, extralegal, and contextual correlates of departure likelihood, and indicated that the effects of offense severity, prior record, a previous sex offense conviction, multiple concurrent convictions, and court size vary across different subsets of sexual convictions.
Sentencing that favours female sexual offenders (FSOs) over male
sexual offenders (MSOs) has negative consequences for victims,
offenders and the community. There have been calls to utilise
qualitative methods to provide a richer understanding of why
these disparities exist. As such, this study aimed to examine
whether perpetrator gender influenced judges’ sentencing
discourse of convicted sexual offenders. Using a systematic
matching process, sentencing remarks for sexual perpetrators
(n = 9 MSOs and n = 9 FSOs) sentenced in Queensland between
2012 and 2019 were thematically analysed. Three main themes
and two sub-themes emerged: (1) gendered discourse about
sexual offenders are predicated on crime severity (sub-themes
included reduced culpability of non-assaultive FSOs compared
with non-assaultive MSOs and the villainisation of violent FSOs
compared with violent MSOs); (2) gender differences in
offender contrition; and (3) judges’ emphasis on parental abuse
of trust, rather than a gendered responsibility, in child abuse
cases. An explanatory model was developed to explicate the
findings using cognitive dissonance, social role and sexual
script theories. The model advances current conceptualisation
of this phenomenon, thereby addressing limitations of previous
theories.
Prevalence rates indicate that female sexual offending is a serious problem in society, but when it comes to sentencing outcomes, females who have sexually offended (FSOs) tend to receive more lenient sentences than males who have sexually offended (MSOs). It is difficult to draw definitive conclusions based on these findings because potential confounding or case-relevant factors have not been well accounted for. We compare sentencing outcomes for ten cases of female sexual offending matched to ten cases of male sexual offending in New Zealand (NZ). We coded the sentencing notes for underlying case-relevant factors and found that although the factors and the way in which they were applied at sentencing were similar for both FSOs and MSOs, FSOs were significantly less likely to receive a prison sentence than were MSOs. We discuss what leniency means for FSOs in terms of impact on victims, community safety, and the rehabilitative processes that are available to reduce recidivism.
The construction of gender roles that develops in the society often affects various aspects of life, especially women's lives and invariably influences and raises the biases that exist in the criminal justice system, especially in the judicial process and in its judgments. This paper attempts to examine how the role of gender construction influences the judges’ sentences against women perpetrators of violent crime which is not a feminine crime. Departing from the evil women hypothesis and chivalry hypothesis as a basis concept. The author seeks to analyze through the results of researches and other secondary sources and then tries to prove that whether women who commit criminal offenses that are not correlated with feminine gender stereotypes, in this case the crime is violent crime, convicted or treated more harshly than men who commited the same crime or vice versa. At the same time the author also tries to use the legal feminist theoretical approach to analyze how the criminal justice system is perceived as a system built by men and for men but to be used as a system to find justice for women.
The authors examine 1980 to 2003 trends in female-to-male interpersonal violence reported in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques and intuitive plot displays show much overlap yet differences in each source’s portrayal of trends in female violence levels and the gender gap. Both sources show little or no change in the gender gap for homicide and rape/sexual assault, whereas UCR police counts show a sharp rise in female-to-male arrests for criminal assault during the past one to two decades—but that rise is not borne out in NCVS counts. Net-widening policy shifts have apparently escalated the arrest proneness of females for “criminal assault” (e.g., policing physical attacks/threats of marginal seriousness that women in relative terms are more likely to commit); rather than women having become any more violent, official data increasingly mask differences in violent offending by men and women.
Theoretical and empirical research pertaining to the influence of gender on sentencing outcomes has focused almost exclusively on the gender of offenders. What this literature has not fully considered is how the gender of crime victims might affect sentencing outcomes. Using data for offenders convicted of three violent crimes in the seven largest metro counties in Texas in 1991, the authors find evidence that offenders who victimized females received substantially longer sentences than offenders who victimized males. Results also show that victim gender effects on sentence length are conditioned by offender gender, such that male offenders who victimize females received the longest sentence of any other victim gender/offender gender combination. However, whereas these effects are observed for sentence length, no victim gender effects are observed on whether offenders received an incarcerative or nonincarcerative sentence. The authors address the implications of their findings for theory and subsequent research.
Although it has been argued that sentencing guidelines reduce the favorable treatment afforded female offenders, only one study has directly theoretically assessed the impact of guidelines on sentencing outcomes for men versus women. This study examines the influence of guidelines on the outcomes of male and female defendants sentenced in Pennsylvania by examining three periods, including one period during which guidelines were suspended. Results indicate that female, compared to male, offenders were less likely to be incarcerated in jail or prison and received shorter sentences in all periods; differences were not greatest when guidelines were suspended. Findings suggest that Pennsylvania's structured sentencing model has not affected the sex—sentencing relationship in that state.
Race and gender pose empirical and policy problems that are both similar and different for the U. S. criminal justice system. They are similar in that blacks and women occupy subordinate social and economic positions in American life, and their interests are less likely to be represented in the justice system than are those of white men. They are different in that blacks are overrepresented in arrest statistics and jail and prison populations while women are underrepresented. If over- (or under-) representation is assumed to result from similar effects of bias and subordination, the two patterns are hard to explain. The empirical literature on criminal courts reveals policy dilemmas in achieving "just" sentencing practices. Blacks (and especially black men) may be more likely than white men or women to benefit from tightly limited discretion and limited individualization of sentencing whereas women (both black and white) may be more likely to benefit from broader discretion and greater individualization. ...
Dramatic increases in the number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons have led some researchers to conclude that differential sentencing of female offenders is a thing of the past. This study uses data on offenders convicted of felonies in Chicago, Miami, and Kansas City to address this issue. The authors find no evidence to support this “gender neutrality” hypothesis. In all three jurisdictions, women face significantly lower odds of incarceration than do men. The results also reveal that the effect of race is conditioned by gender but the effect of gender, with only one exception, is not conditioned by race; harsher treatment of racial minorities is confined to men but more lenient treatment of women is found for both racial minorities and Whites.
We analyze the statistical literature on gender and sentencing to determine whether findings of “sex effects” favoring women are related to the statistical procedures used, to court contexts and sample composition, and to conceptual dimensions of the research. The unit of analysis (or case) is court data sets; our search identified 50 such cases, most of which analyze data from the 1970s. Half of these showed sex effects favoring women; one-quarter each showed mixed effects or no effects. These proportions remained constant when the sample was weighted by a quality score. In comparison with Kleck's review of race and sentencing, sex effects favoring women are far more frequent than race effects favoring whites. Results from the weighted sample suggest that sex effects are evident in both recent and older data sets and in both recent and earlier published work. They are more likely to emerge in analyses of felony offenses, in offenses prosecuted in felony courts, in courts in urban areas, and in the decision to incarcerate rather than in the length of an incarceration sentence. We discuss three ways of interpreting sex effects and propose an agenda for future research.
Guidelines sentencing data from Pennsylvania for the years 1985–1987 are analyzed to assess the influence of gender on judges' imprisonment decisions. These data provide detailed information on offense severity and prior record, permit statistical controls for other variables thought to affect imprisonment decisions, cover a fairly comprehensive list of common-law offenses (with adequate sample size), and contain judges' dispositional-departure reasons for sentences outside the guidelines schema. The data—analyzed with additive and interactive models–indicate that gender (net of other factors) has a small effect on the likelihood of imprisonment toward lesser jailing of female defendants but has a negligible effect on the length-of-imprisonment decision. Observations and interview responses from selected judges help to clarify the ways in which judges' sentencing practices are gender linked. Together, the statistical and the qualitative data suggest that the sentencing practices of judges are driven by two main concerns, blameworthiness (e.g., as indicated by prior record, type of involvement, remorse) and practicality (e.g., as indicated by child-care responsibility, pregnancy, emotional or physical problems, availability of adequate jail space). Based on our findings, we suspect that when men and women appear in (contemporary) criminal court in similar circumstances and are charged with similar offenses, they receive similar treatment. A major question from a policy perspective is, when gender disparities in sentence outcomes do arise, are the disparities warranted or unwarranted?
Prior theory and research on sentencing oversimplify the role of race, gender and age in judicial decision making. In this article we present a “focal concerns” theory of judicial decision making to frame hypotheses regarding the effects on sentencing of these social statuses, both singly and in combination. Analyzing statewide sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania for 1989–1992, we find that, net of controls: (1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the joint effects of race, gender, and age on sentencing, and of using interactive rather than additive models.
Efforts to structure sentencing through guidelines involve a fundamental dilemma for the sociology of law—guidelines attempt to emphasize formal rationality and uniformity (Savelsberg, 1992) while allowing discretion to tailor sentences to fit situations and characteristics of individual defendants when courts deem it warranted (substantive rationality). This exercise of substantive rationality in sentencing based on “extralegal” criteria deemed relevant by local court actors risks the kind of unwarranted disparity that guidelines were intended to reduce. We view local courts as arenas in which two sets of sentencing standards meet—formal rational ones articulated by guidelines vs. substantive, extralegal criteria deemed relevant by local court actors. We use statistical and qualitative data from Pennsylvania, a state whose courts have operated under sentencing guidelines for over a decade. Our analysis examines extralegal differences in three county courts' sentencing outcomes, and then documents ways in which substantive rational sentencing criteria are intertwined with defendants' exercise of their right to trial and their race and gender.
Using a matched sampling method, this research examined the process of sex-based differentiation in sentencing outcomes for 194 men and 194 women, sentenced over a seven-year period in Christchurch, New Zealand. Consistent with past research, our results showed that judicial processing treated women more leniently than men. Path analyses revealed that judges were less likely to sentence women than men to imprisonment terms because of gendered information and decisions made earlier in the judicial process, such as criminal history, length of custodial remands, and pre-sentence recommendations by probation officers. In contrast, judges exercised considerable leniency towards women (compared with men) in setting the length of prison terms, even after statistically controlling for all sex-differentiated factors such as criminal history. Explanations and implications are discussed.
This article analyzes the civil commitment models for treating sexually violent predators (SVPs) and analyzes recent civil commitment laws. SVPs are commonly defined as sex offenders who are particularly predatory and repetitive in their sexually violent behavior. Data from policy literature, a survey to all states, and a review of law review Websites identify 16 states that have civil commitment statutes to address the problem and treatment of SVPs, four states that are in the process of passing such laws, six states that failed to enact proposed statutes, six states that lack SVP legislation, and 18 states that do not have relevant data available. The majority of such laws have created a false sense of safety because they address only convicted sex offenders. New approaches to the civil commitment of sexually violent predators have created multifaceted demands, controversy, ethical dilemmas, and learning opportunities. It is advised that research should be focused on the parameters of sexually violent behaviors, program flexibility, and treatment effectiveness.
Objective. Many studies find that females benefit from their gender in sentencing decisions. Few researchers, however, address whether the gender‐sentencing association might be stronger for some crimes, such as minor nonviolent offending, and weaker for other offenses, such as serious violent crime.
Method. Using a large random sample of convicted offenders in Texas drawn from a statewide project on sentencing practices mandated by the 73rd Texas Legislature, logistic regression and OLS regression analyses of likelihood of imprisonment and prison length illustrate the importance of looking at sentencing outcomes not only in terms of gender but also in terms of crime type.
Results. Specifically, we find that the effect of gender on sentencing does vary by crime type, but not in a consistent or predicted fashion. For both property and drug offending, females are less likely to be sentenced to prison and also receive shorter sentences if they are sentenced to prison. For violent offending, however, females are no less likely than males to receive prison time, but for those who do, females receive substantially shorter sentences than males.
Conclusions. We conclude that such variation in the gender‐sentencing association across crime type is largely due to features of Texas' legal code that channel the level of discretion available to judges depending on crime type and whether incarceration likelihood or sentence length is examined.
Based on an integration of work on uncertainty avoidance in decision making with research on causal attribution in punishment, the author hypothesizes that judges attempt to manage uncertainty by developing “patterned responses” that are the product of an attribution process involving assessments of the offender's likelihood of committing future crime. Washington, D. C, felony sentencing data generated by the Prosecutor's Management and Information System (PROMIS) were used to test this integrated theoretical model. Support for the theoretical integration is provided by the evidence of the effects of prior record, defendant's race, use of a weapon, pretrial release, and the interaction between defendant's race and bail outcome on sentence severity. Contrary to common suppositions, information on defendant-victim relationship and victim provocation was unrelated to sentence severity. Further research should examine judges' attempt to reduce uncertainty by relying on stereotypes and attributions linked to the likelihood of recidivism.
This study examines the independent and interactive effects of race and gender on juvenile justice decision making. Using data from a sample of juvenile court referrals from two midwestern juvenile courts, this study looks at males and females separately by race. The results indicate that the effect of race on the pre-adjudication detention and disposition outcomes varies by gender. The severity or leniency of the outcomes is determined by race, gender, and an interaction of the two. This study underscores the need to examine juvenile justice decision making with a multistage analysis to unravel the intricate effects of race and gender.
There have been periodic “discoveries” of the violent female offender as well as dire predictions of an increase in violence committed by women. The authors examine the pattern of violent crime by women over a long period of time to determine whether or not the “problem” of increasing violence is a myth. The authors conclude that women’s contribution to violent crime has been and continues to make up a small percentage, except for crime categories that are highly vulnerable to changes in system responses.
Research examining the role of gender in criminal sentencing has focused on gender bias, in that females are sentenced to lesser punish ments than males for the same offense. What many studies have not addressed is the extent to which sentencing guidelines have affected gen der bias. In other words, does gender bias exist, even in the presence of sentencing guidelines?
Extending Koons-Witt's (2002) study of whether sex-based disparities in imprisonment likelihoods changed under sentencing guidelines in Minnesota, we examined similar models for Ohio with additional analyses of felony conviction likelihoods and sentence length for 5,472 felony defendants from twenty-four trial courts. The main effects of a defendant's sex on imprisonment were significant during both periods (unlike the Minnesota findings), consistent with a chivalry perspective. Random coefficient models revealed that these effects were similar across the twenty-four jurisdictions. Analyses also revealed significant postguideline reductions in sentence length disparities based on a woman's race and number of dependent children, yet increased disparities in imprisonment likelihoods postguidelines based on a woman's race and whether she was convicted on drug charges. These and other findings are discussed in the context of the Ohio legislature's implementation of a sentencing scheme that retains considerably more judicial discretion relative to Minnesota's template.
In recent years the management of the dangerous, particularly sex offenders, has generated enormous concern. This concern has been reflected at a number of different levels—in media and popular responses to the risk posed by released sex offenders and in official discourses where an abundance of legislation and policy reforms have been enacted within a relatively short period. This analysis seeks to evaluate critically these developments within the context of contemporary criminal justice policy and practice in relation to the management of sex offenders in the community. The article analyses the contemporary focus on risk management or preventative governance which underpins the current regulatory framework and has been reflected in both the sentencing options and in control in the community initiatives for sex offenders. In this respect, the article highlights the gap between policy and practice in terms of the effective risk management of sex offenders. Given the failure of the traditional justice system with respect to these types of offences, it will be argued that the retributive framework could usefully be supplemented by the theory and practice of reintegrative or restorative community justice, in order to manage better the risk presented by sex offenders in the community.
The sex of the offender is a significant determinant of the length and type of the sentence imposed. Many sentencing statutes and judges make sex distinctions that are transmitted into different sentences for male and female offenders found guilty of the same offense. Sometimes this discrimination on the basis of sex works in favor of females before the law; most of the time it works against them; all of the time, whether the sentence is more lenient or more severe than the one imposed on a. male, the misbegotten motive is chivalry or special protectiveness. Our statutes and sentencing practices incorporate a double standard of morality. Males and females are not equal under the law.
Interactive analyses examined three related hypotheses of disparity. The typicality hypothesis proposes that women are treated with chivalry in criminal processing, but only when their charges are consistent with stereotypes of female offenders. Selective chivalry predicts that decision makers extend chivalry disproportionately to white females. Differential discretion suggests that disparity is most likely in informal decisions such as charge reduction rather than in formal decisions at final sentencing. Data for the analysis derived from 9,966 felony theft cases and 18,176 felony assault cases disposed in California in 1988. Gender disparity was evident in findings that females with no prior record were more likely than similar males to receive charge reductions, and this enhanced females' chances for probation. The only indication of selective chivalry was a greater tendency to change charges of assault to nonassault among white female defendants than among minority females. Pivotal decisions concerning charge reduction provided partial support for the notion of differential discretion. The findings provided no clear support for the typicality thesis.
Feminist criminology, as an outgrowth of the second wave of feminism, came of age during a period of considerable change and political optimism. As a mature field, it now inhabits a social and political landscape radically altered and increasingly characterized by the politics of backlash. Given feminist criminology's dual focus on gender and crime, it is uniquely positioned to respond to two core aspects of the current backlash political agenda: racism and sexism. To do this effectively, feminist criminology must prioritize research on the race/gender/punishment nexus. This article provides three examples of how such a focus exposes the crucial roles played by constructions of the crime problem as well as current crime-control strategies in the ratification and enforcement of antifeminist and racist agendas. Finally, the field must seek creative ways to blend scholarship with activism while simultaneously providing support and encouragement to emerging feminist criminologists willing to take such risks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present study explores the relationships between gender and imprisonment decisions in Minnesota before and after the introduction of sentencing guidelines. Results from a series of logistic regression models indicate that gender alone did not have a significant impact on the likelihood of imprisonment, but women with dependent children were significantly less likely to be imprisoned before sentencing guidelines and in the years subsequent to their implementation. The findings suggest that despite the introduction of sentencing reforms, court officials tend to return to issues of substantive justice, and they appear unable to shed their individual or organizational ideas of fairness in sentencing.
ABSTRACT* * *The judicial treatment of adult female relative to male criminal offenders is theoretically and empirically examined in this paper. After discussing various problems with the chivalry hypothesis and labeling theory–the two major explanations of gender disparities-an empirical test is made to determine the accuracy of both perspectives. An analysis of 543 adult felony cases in Dade County, Florida, using multiple regression to control for the effects of relevant legal and nonlegal variables, indicated inconsistent differences in treatment by sex at the h e k of negotiations, prosecution, conviction, and sentence. These differences also vary over the three time periods examined: 1965–1966, 1971, and 1975–1976. The findings do not support any existing theory of the differential legal handling of male and female offenders, clearly indicating a need for the development of theory that takes into account the growing body of empirical work in this area.
Contemporary research on criminal sentencing has analyzed sentencing under numerous sentencing policies, yet the effect of
sentencing policy on outcomes and disparity is not known. A variety of sentencing guidelines systems, one of the more common
sentencing policies, exists throughout the country. In addition, recent Supreme Court decisions regarding sentencing guidelines
are likely to produce alterations to several state sentencing policies over the next few years. Using data from the state
of Florida, the current study examines the effects of policy transformation on sentencing disparity within the focal concerns
of sentencing perspective. The authors view sentencing guidelines as a practical constraint on sentencing decisions that influence
other key variables. The results indicate that sentencing policy transformation has an important effect on both sentencing
decisions and on the factors that shape those decisions. The findings suggest that future sentencing research and theoretical
development would benefit from incorporating measures of policy differences in its analyses.
This paper examines 77,236 federal offenders sentenced under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and concludes the following. First, after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables, I found that blacks, males, and offenders with low levels of education and income receive substantially longer sentences. Second, disparities are primarily generated by departures from the guidelines, rather than differential sentencing within the guidelines. Departures produce about 55 percent of the black-white difference and 70 percent of the male-female difference. Third, although black-white disparities occur across offenses, the largest differences are for drug trafficking. The Hispanic-white disparity is generated primarily by those convicted of drug trafficking and firearm possession/trafficking. Last, blacks and males are also less likely to get no prison term when that option is available; less likely to receive downward departures; and more likely to receive upward adjustments and, conditioned on having a downward departure, receive smaller reductions than whites and females. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.
Few studies exist on female sexual offenders or women accused of sexual offenses. In some instances, conclusions from existing studies conflict. In an effort to better understand the phenomenon of sexual abuse by females, we gathered data on all women charged with a sexual offense referred to our facility (William S. Hall Psychiatric Institute in Columbia, South Carolina) for a criminal responsibility/competence to stand trial evaluation from 1987 to 1997. Alleged sexual offenses included criminal sexual conduct one, two, and three and performing a lewd act upon a minor. Fifteen women were referred. This study examines characteristics of the accused women and their victims. Patterns of the alleged offenses and outcome of forensic evaluation are also examined. We found women accused of committing sexual offenses to have a high likelihood of past sexual and physical victimization as well as ongoing physical victimization. Borderline intellectual function and mental retardation were common and women acted frequently with co-defendants. The victims knew the perpetrator in every instance.
This research examines 61 juvenile female sex offenders in terms of their offending patterns, demographics, and victim characteristics; these findings are compared to 122 juvenile male sex offenders. Relying on sex offender registration data and criminal history records, bivariate analyses are conducted to assess male-female differences. Logistic regression is also employed to further assess group membership (male and female). Females were typically younger than males at the time of their arrest for a sex offense. Female offenders also chose male and female victims proportionately, whereas males were more likely to choose female victims. Logistic regression analysis revealed two significant predictors of the offender's sex: victim's sex and length of sentence. This research, therefore, indicates different modalities of offense characteristics for males and females, which predicates different management strategies in terms of identification for these groups of offenders.
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