Crime and Criminal Justice - Essay Example

_______________ ID: ___________ Roll No: _____________ Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice Empirical research indicates that the female offender patterns of criminal behavior have not changed significantly since the late eighteenth century, this research can be further enhanced by studying arrest, court, and prison case records which indicates that almost all women involved in crime continue to commit crimes traditionally associated with other females, such as larceny/theft, prostitution, drunkenness, fraud, and homicide involving family members or male friends. The question arises here as to what are those circumstances that tend feminist towards such nefarious acts. Whatever be the circumstances, these acts are primarily unsophisticated crimes that require little skill and education and yield small rewards. The evidence indicates that women, who have been arrested and convicted, have been from the lower socioeconomic class and members of ethnic or racial minority groups. However this is not necessary, as research shows certain cases where women are convicted to such acts just in order to gain internal satisfaction, which indicates psychological disorders. The persistence of these myths reflects societal attitudes regarding the acceptable role of women and, consequently, influences the treatment of female offenders. (Clarice, 1994) Prostitution, which is considered to be a common societal dilemma today, was not, always, a criminal offence in England. In eighteenth century; the prostitution offences were specifically soliciting, living off immoral earnings, and running 'houses of ill fame', but these were enforced selectively. Manifestly neither the proprietors, nor the women who catered for gentlemen in these establishments, were perceived as members of a criminal class or professional criminals; and at this end the profits were handsome. The less salubrious 'houses of ill fame' were more vulnerable, though even in some of the poorest districts the police did not interfere with them. (Chesney, 1970) Women could be violent. Some beat, or otherwise ill-treated, servants and apprentices; on occasions such violence went too far and landed them in court. (Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England, 1989) Women fought each other; less commonly they fought with men and, like Jane Smith, a few fought with the police. Like their men folk Irish women had a particular reputation in this respect. (The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent, 1991) Today a chivalry perspective holds the view that male officers are reluctant to arrest females, thus reducing the number of female offenders counted. Also it is observed that most women offenders are never caught because of the types of crimes they commit. (Otto, 1950) Finally, some observers claim 'paternalism' toward female offenders in the juvenile and criminal justice systems that effectively operates as a filtering-out mechanism. Official accounts, which are largely based upon arrest and court data, are the basis for the compilation of most crime and delinquency statistics. Court data introduce the potential problems of diversion, paternalism, or chivalry, which may distort the number of female offenders. The number of female arrests presents the 'danger of using the terms arrest and crimes committed interchangeably, and arrest statistics may not be the most reliable source of data for determining actual crime rates.' (Rita James Simon, 1975, p. 36) Three different aspects can examine the dilemma of female crime; first, all the specific offenses which are historically associated with female offenders. (Carol Smart, 1976, p. 6-8). The second area of focus includes those offenses for which women and girls are more frequently arrested as indicated in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (1978). Third, a number of offenses that are generally considered unusual from female characteristics. Violent Crimes Most crimes of violence by females take place in the family setting where the victims are usually the husband, lover, or child of the woman offender. In one study of female violent crime such victims comprised over half of the homicide cases and over one third of the assault cases examined (David, Maurice, Ward, 1979) For most of the part, male and female adult friends or acquaintances were the victims in the homicide cases, whereas more of the assault cases involved strangers. An Ontario study of violence and dangerous behavior included violent female offenders, one hospitalized group and another group incarcerated in an Ontario penitentiary. (Ellen, 1974) These women were found to be slightly older than their male counterparts and were mostly from the lower middle or working class; their violence occurred within the family environment. Half of the women who were hospitalized had killed their own children. Infanticide Infanticide has historically been considered a sex-specific crime, or one that 'actually excludes the members of one sex by legal definition.' (Smart, p. 6.) In her descriptions of the English legal system Carol Smart points out that infanticide is the one exception to equally applicable British law since it is an offense committable only by women. Some attribute this offense to the occasion when an unmarried mother must rid herself of a shameful secret through 'suffocation, strangulation, and the infliction of wounds or fractures to the skull as the most frequent forms of infanticide.' (Otto, 1950, pp. 20-23) Modern versions of infanticide have taken the form of unwed mothers, and often include married women who use more devious means to get rid of an unwanted burden. Many murders of infants are classified to be some form of accidental or natural causes. Assault It is difficult for a woman to use physical strength in an assault, so she is forced to use a knife, some other kitchen item, or a household product. Otto Pollak reports only one method of aggravated assault by women as notable: throwing disfiguring sulfuric acid at the victim, usually an unfaithful lover. (Pollak, pp. 23-24) The practice of throwing scarring solutions such as gasoline, and acids and in a recent case involving a well-known rock artist is still a common practice used by women to 'equalize' their lack of assault strength. (Ryan, 1981) Many violent women offenders wait until their male victims are asleep to perpetrate their assaults, which, in some cases, become homicides. Family Violence Very little is known about family violence, but recent examinations of the problem have revealed some startling cases of women who abuse their children, husband, and parents. The actual extent of family violence is generally unknown. The role that physical punishment plays in child rearing and socialization in our society is felt to lead to the kicking, burning, choking, biting, hitting with the fist, twisting of the arms, and breaking of the bones of children. (Mann, 1984) Because most criminologists had neglected the study of women criminals (Smart, C. 1976) Pollak's portrait of the 'masked female offender' gained certain credibility indeed, it was almost the only authoritative view available. However, both Pollak's evidential base and his arguments have been re-examined recently, and it is clear that in comparison with men, females commit very few crimes, particularly 'serious' conventional crimes (J.A. Scutt, 1978) Consequently it is Pollak's image of the 'masked female offender', which is fast being turned into a myth. This is not simply because 'permissive' legislation has resulted in prostitution per se being decriminalized and abortion becoming legally available in private clinics and National Health hospitals, although obviously both these changes mean that thousands of women, whose behaviour would have been described in the past as criminal, are now no longer at risk of being so labelled. (Box, 1989) But rather, it is because criminologists have attempted during the last twenty years to overcome Pollak's claim that 'undiscovered crime is beyond the reach of any quantitative assessment'. Their results from self-report studies and victimization surveys show that the 'numerical sex-differentials furnished by the official crime statistics' a very good guide to the actual sex-differential, at least as far as 'conventional' crimes are concerned. First, what sex-differential is furnished by official crime statistics If the data provided in the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales, of nineteenth century are standardized by controlling for the relative size of the male and female population aged between 15 and 64 years, then the observations seem warranted. (Box, 1989) The only offence where the female rate of conviction approximates that of men is shoplifting. A long way behind comes fraud and forgery out of every five persons convicted, only one is female. For all the other serious indictable offences, the ratio is even lower. Only one impression is possible: the official statistics, controlled for population size, show that the female rate of conviction for serious 'conventional' criminal activity is much lower than that for men approximately only eighteen females are convicted for every hundred males convicted. These two views are not necessarily contradictory for they appear to focus on different types of crime. The first argues that when women commit serious crimes, they will be less severely sanctioned than men: Steffensmeier (Steffensmeier, 1980) proposes a number of reasons why this might occur, judges do not want to separate a mother from her children because they view social reproduction as an important female job; judges, police, and the public have difficulty conceptualizing serious female crime and prefer to believe that 'she didn't really do it' or 'wasn't really capable of it', or, as Millman (Millman, 1975) puts it, 'she only did it for love', poor demented little thing; women are not generally believed to be really criminal and hence an occasional, even serious criminal act is more likely to be viewed as an irrational or emotional response to a passing situation, and therefore not predictive of further criminal behaviour; finally, if severe penal sanctions are a direct response to the perceived dangerousness of the offender, then it is believed that they need not be applied so often to women because on the whole they are not really dangerous. In other words, when the concept of 'chivalry' is dissected, it reveals a series of beliefs which when acted upon tend to deflate the contribution women make to serious crime, because members of the public report female suspects less, the police arrest or prosecute them less, and even then often after making a reduction in the seriousness of the charge, and judges and juries return relatively more not-guilty verdicts, or if this is not possible, tend not to impose the severest penal sanction. (Ryan, 1981) On the other hand, according to the cynical view, many women do not commit serious crimes, but instead commit merely 'status' or minor sexual offences, or no offences at all. None the less, they are more severely treated by the criminal justice system which, by locking up more women for 'their own protection' than is required by the normal demands of justice, inflates the apparent criminality of women. As far as the serious female crime is concerned, the question arises, 'do women suspected of committing serious conventional crimes get away with it more than men, and thereby produce a sex-differential in criminal behaviour statistics which is more illusion than reality'(Box, 1989) This can only be answered by considering the best available evidence. Victimization surveys provide an extremely interesting window on the public's willingness to report female suspects to the police. Thus Hindelang reports that 'of the victimizations surveyed in the overall 1972-76 period, almost one-half of those involving male offenders and only one-third of those involving female offenders were reported to the police'. After investigation and taking into account the nature of bodily injury, weapon use, intimidation, forcible sexual intercourse, and financial loss suffered by the victims, Hindelang was able to make two important observations: first, females contributed far less than men to serious crime, but ironically, the most serious crimes committed by female offenders were slightly more likely to be reported to the police than male-offender crimes, and only for the less serious crimes was there a small trend in the opposite direction; second, if 'chivalry' existed it appeared to be a female virtue, for females reported female-offenders less than did male victims! (Ryan, 1981) A year-long investigation by the House Select Committee on Aging views the abuse of the elderly as a widespread national problem almost equal to child abuse with the finding that about 4 percent of our older population, or 1 million senior citizens, experience neglect, beatings, druggings, torture, and rape, mostly at the hands of relatives. (Robert Ryan, 1981) Criminal law and the courts have, increasingly, been seen as a way into the exploration of gender attitudes and relationships. (Emsley, 1996) Work Cited Carol Smart, 1976. "Women, Crime, and Criminology: A Feminist Critique" Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 6-8 "Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England", Routledge, London, 1989, p. 117; O.B.S.P. 1829, no. 751, pp. 350-9 David A. Ward, Maurice Jackson, and Renee Ward, 1979 "Crimes of Violence by Women," in "The Criminology of Deviant Women, Freda Adler and Rita James Simon", eds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979, pp. 117-18 Ellen Rosenblatt and Cyril Greenland, 1974. "Female Crimes of Violence," Canadian Journal of Crime and Corrections: 173-80 Emsley Clive, 1996. "Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900": Longman. Place of Publication: London. Feinman Clarice, 1994. "Women in the Criminal Justice System": Praeger Publishers: Westport, CT. Foster Janet, 1990. "Villains: Crime and Community in the Inner City": Routledge. Place of Publication: London. J.A. Scutt, 1978. "Debunking the theory of the female 'masked' criminal". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 11: 23-42 Kellow Chesney, 1970. "The Victorian Underworld, Penguin, Harmondsworth", pp. 365-7; Emsley, Policing and its Context, p. 140. Lewis Koch and Joanne Koch, 1980. "Parent Abuse ... A New Plague," Tallahassee Democrat, January 27, pp. 14, 16 Mann Coromae Richey, 1984. "Female Crime and Delinquency": University of Alabama Press. Place of Publication: University, AL. Millman, M., 1975. "She did it all for love: a feminist view of the sociology of deviance" in M. Millman and R.M. Kanter "Another Voice". New York: Vintage. Otto Pollak, 1950. "The Criminality of Women": Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rita James Simon, 1975. "The Contemporary Woman and Crime" Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office. Robert Ryan, 1981. "Abuse of Elderly Extensive, Report Says," Tallahassee Democrat, April 3, p. 3A Shelley, I. Louise, 1981. "Crime and Modernization: The Impact of Industrialization and Urbanization on Crime": Southern Illinois University Press. Place of Publication: Carbondale, IL. Steffensmeier, D.J, 1980. "Assessing the impact of the women's movement on sex-based differences in the handling of adult criminal defendants". Crime and Delinquency 76: 344-57. Steven Box, 1989. "Power, Crime and Mystification": Routledge. Place of Publication: London. The Unwritten Law: Criminal Justice in Victorian Kent, Oxford U.P., New York, 1991, pp. 70-2 Read More