Question

Women seem to be sentenced more leniently than men. Outline the principal theories used to explain this sentence disparity. Defend the theory you think best explains this disparity.

Answer 1

• Nagel and Weitzman (1971) and Pope (1975), who found that women appear to receive preferential treatment in sentencing over males, efforts to explain this disparity have centered around two theories: chivalry and the more recent focal concerns.
• The chivalry thesis posits that gendered stereotypes about both women and men influence sentencing outcomes according to the sex of offenders.Sometimes called paternalism, chivalry asserts that women are stereotyped as fickle and childlike, and therefore not fully responsible for their criminal behavior.
• Women therefore need to be protected by males who, with all due gallantry, are portrayed as wanting to minimize any pain or suffering women might experience. According to the chivalry thesis, when these stereotypes are played out in the arena of the criminal justice system, they will result in preferential treatment for female offenders from predominantly male police officers, prosecutors, and judges.Thus, prevailing stereotypes about men and women are predicted by the chivalry thesis to underlie outcomes showing milder criminal sentences for women.
• More recent views on gender and sentencing issues stem from three somewhat related concepts: bounded rationality, focal concerns and blameworthiness attribution. These theories share a common denominator—that the relationship between gender and sentencing is the byproduct of human error expressed in judicial outcomes.
• According focal concern theory, constraints on the amount of time judges can spend on their cases and other factors mean that judges generally receive incomplete information on defendants and their cases. Confronted with these restrictions,judicial decisions on sentencing outcomes are thereby infused, to some extent, with generalizations and personal bias.
• Judges and other court players commonly make contextual attributions about the defendant’s culpability, character, and potential recidivism based on three focal concerns: blameworthiness, dangerousness (community protection), and practical constraints.They may, for example, attribute certain qualities to offenders based on their gender. Female offenders may be viewed as less of a risk to the community or to reoffend while male offenders may be seen as more culpable and, hence, more responsible for their crimes.
• I do agree with chivalry theory,that females do have an upper hand in getting lenient sentence.It is seen that if women commit crimes which are typical of them like thefts,shoplifting,drug use etc. then are treated lenietly by the law.‘‘Evil women’’ who commit more masculine crimes, such as those that involve violence, will not benefit from their gender at the sentencing stage, and will not be preferentially treated compared to men, and may even receive harsher sentences, as they are not only violating the law but gender roles as well.