Are women underrepresented in crime statistics because of sexism within the criminal justice system? - page 1
Keywords: Sexism Women Crime Criminal Justice System Chivalry Thesis
By roshooo on 10/06/2010
Level: A Level (Year 13)
Page Number: 1 of 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Official statistics regarding crime indicate that male crimes are much more common than female crimes, with only one of five convicted offenders in England and Wales being female. This pattern has led sociologists in the past to see female crimes as near to non-existent, or unimportant. Carol Smart comments that women commit fewer crimes which are much more trivial than male crimes in addition. She also pointed out that sociological and criminological fields have always been male dominated and so studies about crime are generally about men, by men. She concludes that female crime is trivial and insignificant as criminology aims to change the problems of crime, and female crime has not been viewed as problematic. Despite this, many sociologists have more recently claimed that female crime is not trivial and non-existent, instead it is merely underestimated. They argue that womens’ crime often goes unreported, for example in the case of shoplifting, and even when women’s crime is reported, there is much less chance that the female will be prosecuted due to leniency of the criminal justice system on women.
The concept of the criminal justice system’s leniency towards female criminals is referred to as the ‘chivalry thesis’ and is based on the assumption that men are socialized to act in a chivalrous manner towards women. Otto Pollak argues that men have a protective attitude towards women and therefore are inclined not to prosecute women, “men hate to accuse women and thus them to their punishment, police officers dislike to arrest them, district attorneys to prosecute them, judges and juries to find them guilty…” this subsequently results in the small crime rates for women as seen in official statistics. Self-report studies do tend to mirror this view, Grahams and Bowling’s study of 1,721 14-15 year olds found that men were only slightly more likely to offend than women and still the difference between offending between genders is much smaller than suggested by official statistics. Likewise, Roger Hood’s study of 3,000 defendants found that men were three times more likely to be jailed and Hilary Allen found that women often escape prison sentences in very serious cases, such as manslaughter, whereas males are likely to be convicted. Pollak argues that because men dominate the criminal justice system it is much easier for women to hide their crimes, also. He claims that women are accustomed to hiding things from male, biologically, because of
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