NCJ Number
195992
Date Published
2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This chapter traces the emergence in England and Wales of categories of female offenders that disguise the interplay of gender, age, class, and race, serving to produce a spurious categorical equality with male offenders that makes it necessary for increasing numbers of women to be punished.
Abstract
The author argues that in the past decade in the United Kingdom, as well as in the United States and Australia, penal policymakers have not taken note of the fact that women still commit very little crime compared to men and are not at high risk of either reoffending or causing serious harm. Instead, the "search for equivalence" in sentencing has encouraged sentencers to ignore gender as a factor in sentencing. A spurious gender-neutrality has sought to ignore gender issues in sex offenses, drug offenses, domestic violence, and other violent offenses. This has led to the creation of cognitive-behavioral programs for the treatment of women's "gender-neutral" problems of anger, drugs, sex offending, and general deviance. In the effort to retreat from traditional paternalism and maternalism, women have effectively been ignored as a category of offender who requires any special attention. In addition to a spurious view of "gender-neutrality," penal policy has also been influenced by a "new psychology" of female aggression, which views motherhood as a dangerous, risk-laden arena. These various factors have masked the interplay of gender, race, class, and age as factors in offending and focused only on differences of race, class, and age. In effect, gender has become irrelevant in the analysis of factors that should affect sentencing. 8 notes