Why Women Are Chosen as a Minority Group in Society and Criminal Justice - Essay Example

Minority Group - Women Name Class Unit Introduction The term minority have been used to describe a group in the society that has no or few positions of power in the society. This is well defined through the social majority. The term minority does not always imply the numeric minority. Women are almost half of the population but are considered as minority. Women have been discriminated for a long time and underrepresented in the society. Prejudices and discriminations have led to many theories which have attempted to prove that men are superior to women. Worldwide, women are treated as a minority group (Lovenduski, 2001). This essay analyses why women are chosen as a minority group in society and criminal justice. The essay will also look into the reason why they are considered as both offenders and victims in the context of the criminal justice system. It has been observed that representation in the society tends to be gained from the elite in the society. Even in a fair and democratic election, women in most cases remain underrepresented (Lovenduski, 2001). Over the years, violence against women has been on rise. This is violence ranging from sexual to domestic violence. In the criminal justice system, women have been under discrimination. In the past, women prisoners were treated as second class citizens. The prisons were not well constructed as compared to men’s prisoners. The reforms in the prison system saw the women getting their rights (Martin & Jurik, 2006). In US, when the war on drugs was enforced, women were the most convicted. This is due to the large number of the women running drugs since they did not have other means to make a living. Some of the women had been forced to sell drugs (Reichel, 2002). Another reason for an increase in women in prisons at the time was aggregated assault and murder against their abusive partners. This is a trend that has continued to the day. A lot of women are still going to prison since they can’t find another way of making income apart from drugs. Women may also be forced to turn to prostitution and theft with an aim of catering for their families (Heimer, 2000). Research has shown that gender matters in crime committed by women. The differing lives of men and women determine their patterns in criminal offending (Hollin & Palmer, 2006). Most of the women who are in social and economic margins are forced into crime in order to survive. Due to their gender, women are also highly likely to be involved in experiences of sexual assault, domestic violence and abuse. The leading pathway for women in crime is their need for survival. There is a strong link between female crime and drug use. Women who use drugs are highly likely to be involved in a crime. Drug addicted women can commit a crime to access money for supporting their drug use (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Abusive families and relationships have strong impacts on the life of the women offenders. In some cases, women come into contact with criminal system as offenders running away from their homes to escape violence or sexual abuse. This may lead them to use prostitution, crime and drug use as their means of survival (Chan & Rigakos, 2002). Drug addiction, sexual abuse and social and economic problems push women into homelessness. This is another complication in the women life in the criminal justice system. In some cases, women offenders are introduced to drugs by their partners. The partners continue supplying them the drugs until they are addicted. The attempts to get off the drugs by women often elicit violence from their partners. Despite this, women remains attached to their partners despite the abuse and neglect. This has a great impact on the women future and current behaviour. The gender differences that put women into crime need to be addressed at all levels of criminal justice (Chesney-Lind, 1986). Women are mostly the victims of domestic violence. Despite the seriousness of the crime, battered women fear that their partners will retaliate if they report. This has kept the women away from reporting domestic violence in some cases. In some cases, women are killed by their partners who fears they will report to justice on violence. This has made women who have been victims of domestic violence to keep silence on crimes committed (Miller, 2001). The criminal justice system in some cases views the battered women as responsible for the crimes committed against her. This has been one of the barriers for the women seeking criminal justice help. The criminal justice system in most countries has been reluctance in prosecuting domestic violence cases (Du Mont, Miller & Myhr, 2003). This has eroded the victims’ confidence on the use of criminal justice system. When the serious domestic assaults are treated as misdemeanours, the victims may get a notion that the costs of prosecutions are higher than the consequences on the assailant. This has led to lost interest in the criminal justice prosecution (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2003). Women who have low finances may find the cost of prosecution too high. This leads to reluctance to proceed with the prosecution of assailant. This may in some cases lead to women seeking termination of prosecution. As the victims of domestic violence turns to the criminal justice system with an aim of finding assistance to end violence, they are uninformed (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). They are also naïve on the powers that the justice holds to end violence in their lives. This has made their participation in the criminal justice system to be minimised and less effective (Belknap, 2014). Women commit less murder than men hence are seen to be less violent. The belief in women non-violence nature contributes to the discourses surrounding gender. Women are assumed to have some inherent characteristics such as gentleness and passivity. When women are involved in a crime such as murder, the gendered behaviours comes under challenge. The women are labelled as mad or victims instead of the perpetrators (Covington, 1998). The labelling is both by the society and the criminal justice system. Labelling a woman who commits a crime this way is a form of denial to their agency. The labelling denies the women recognition that they have the ability to make decisions and act in a given way. This leads to various issues which includes the maintenance of the current gendered status quo that exists in the criminal justice system (Harris, 2000). The issue of labelling women who commits crime differently affects construction of crime. Research shows that there is a relationship between the label given to the offender and their treatment in the criminal justice system (Lynch, 2014). The labels are damaging to the women in which they are attached to. The label promotes gender stereotypes in the society and law. The labels forces women to conform to appropriate behaviour stereotyped by the society. When the women are prosecuted on their crimes, it turns out to be a trial of their character. Their trial promotes the gendered criminal justice. The sentence does not only look at the crime done by the woman but her deviation from the expected feminine behaviour. It has been observed that criminal treatment is not same for women. Women who do not meet given ideals for motherhood receive more punitive treatment (Covington, 1998). Current sentencing laws in the criminal justice system are based on the male characteristics and their crime. The law fails to look at the reality of women life as minority, their lives and responsibilities. Males have been seen as the normal subjects of criminology. Most of the research on criminology have looked at male criminality and failed to focus on women who are the minority. Most of the research on women crime has been sexist without looking for empirical evidence (Belknap, 2014). The bailing system in criminal justice was aimed at providing protection for the public. Despite this, women who commit less serious crimes are forced to pay bail in order to stay out of prison. The task of making a bail is different for both male and female offenders. Most of the women offenders are poor and unemployed. The women are at a disadvantage due to their social economic status. Men are at a better position to pay for the bail as compared to the women. Women are required to have contact with their children (Holtfreter & Morash, 2003). The number of children with a mother in a prison has been on rise in prisons especially in US. The separation from the family is one of the most damaging aspects that face women imprisonment. The lack of contact between mother and child makes the issue worse. In most cases, the forced separation from child leads to a strained parent child relationship (Harris, 2000). Women become victims also when they re-enter into the community from the criminal justice system. Upon returning to the community, women face a limited access to the social resources including housing and employment. There has been promotion of excessively punitive responses to crime which does not consider women needs. This limits their ability to integrate to the community (Belknap, 2014). Conclusion Women form a minority group worldwide despite the fact that they compromise almost half the world population. This is due to fact that the term minority does not always look at numbers but at the representation and discrimination. In the criminal justice system, women can be both offenders and victims. Women are affected by varying issues in the criminal justice system which makes them offenders or victims. Women are victims of sexism, poverty, sexual assault and domestic violence. Women have also been offenders through drug use, prostitution and crime. The criminal justice system has been in most cases unfair towards women who are in the minority. The system seems to favour men in some cases. Most of the research on criminology has focused on men leaving women out. Women are victims in most cases and the criminal justice system has not been able to address their grievances well. There is need to address the issues faced by women in the criminal justice system and ensure they get fair treatment. Reference Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (2010). Rehabilitating criminal justice policy and practice. 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