1. 1
Official crime figures and the relationship
between gender and the Criminal Justice
System
• 1 Do women really commit fewer crimes than
men or are the figures misleading?
• 2 How do women fare once they are processed
by the Criminal Justice System? Is it biased
towards or against women?

2. 2
Sex Blind
• In theory at least the vast majority of laws are
sex blind – the possibility of being charged, or
the type of offence for which you are being
charged, does not depend on your sex
• There are a handful of gendered laws e.g. only
men can be convicted of rape; only women can
be convicted of soliciting as prostitutes
• However so few crimes come into these
categories that they make little difference to the
overall stats

3. 3
Chivalry Thesis
• Chivalry = gallantry,
courtesy/politeness to
women
• Idea which asserts
that women are let off
relatively lightly
(leniently) by the
predominantly male
police, judges,
magistrates etc in the
criminal justice
system

4. 4
Evidence for Chivalry Thesis
• There are two sources of evidence which
support the Chivalry Thesis:
• ONE Self-report studies
• give some indication of amount of
unreported crime and chances that
different groups have of escaping
discovery and prosecution for their
offences

5. 5
Directly Observed Crime
• Buckle & Farrington (1984) carried out a small-
scale observational study of shoplifting in a
British department store in southeast England in
1981
• Shoplifting is one crime where numbers of
female offenders nearly match numbers of male
offenders in the official stats
• This study found 2.8% of 142 males observed
shoplifted, but only 1.4% of the 361 females did
so

6. 6
Evidence for Chivalry Thesis 1
ONE Self Report Studies
• Graham & Bowling (1995) 1,721 14-25 yr olds
in England and Wales. Found males admitted
more offences but the differences were not as
great as those shown in official statistics e.g.
• 55% of males and 31% of women admitted
having committed any offence
• 28% of men and 12% of women admitted
committing an offence in the last 12 months
• In official stats around 4 times as many men as
women are convicted in a typical 12 month
period

7. 7
Evidence for Chivalry Thesis 2
TWO Cautioning of Offenders
• Official statistics show evidence that
female suspects are more likely than male
suspects to be cautioned rather than
prosecuted
• 2007:
• males recorded as offending:
30% cautioned
• females recorded as offending:
49% cautioned

8. 8
AO2 EVALUATION
• Graham & Bowling (1995) study found
that females less likely than men to be
involved in more serious offences
• The seriousness of the offence could thus
explain the lower proportions of females
among the convicted and cautioned than
among self-reported offenders – rather
than the leniency in the Criminal Justice
System

9. 9
Evidence against Chivalry
Thesis
• There is also some
evidence to suggest that
the Chivalry Thesis has
no basis

10. 10
Criminal justice as biased
against women
• Some argue that women are treated more
harshly by the criminal justice system than
men
• There is evidence to suggest that male
offenders are sometimes treated more
sympathetically than their female victims
especially in rape trials

11. 11
Carol Smart (1989)
Argues that rape trials celebrate male
sexual need (i.e. not their fault) e.g.
‘Women who say no do not always mean
no…If she doesn’t want it she only has to
keep her legs shut’ Judge Wild 1982
It is the height of imprudence for any girl
to hitch-hike at night…She is in the true
sense asking for it
Judge Bertrand Richards 1982

12. 12
Sandra Walklate (2001)
• Argues that in effect it is the female victim rather
than the male suspect who ends up on trial
• Women have to establish their respectability if
their evidence it to be believed
• Rape trials are biased to the male view – men
become unable to restrain their sexual desires
once women give them the slightest indication
that they may be available for sex

13. 13
Double Standards in Criminal
Justice
• Frances Heidensohn (1985) argues that
women are treated more harshly when
they deviate from societal norms of female
sexuality and femininity
• Sexually promiscuous girls are more likely
to be taken into care than similar boys
• On the other hands courts are often
reluctant to imprison mothers with young
children

14. 14
Pat Carlen (1997)
• The majority of women who
go to prison in England,
Wales and Scotland are less
likely to be sentenced for the
seriousness of their crimes
and more according to the
court’s assessment of them
as wives, mothers and
daughters.

15. 15
British Criminal Justice System
• If Heidensohn and Carlen are right then
the British criminal justice system is highly
GENDERED, that is it’s decisions are at
least partly based on the sex and gender
characteristics (as well as the class and
ethnicity) of those it deals with. As such the
idea of equality before the law is an illusion
• Perhaps women are simply judged more on
being ‘sad, bad or mad’ than on the crimes
they have actually committed (so called
‘Double Deviance’ – judged on both their
crime and their inability to live up to the
female gender script (appropriate societal
behaviour for a woman or mother)

16. 16
Synoptic Link: Education
See p284 in book
Over the past 20 years there has been a huge
shift in the comparative success rates of boys
and girls – girls now outperform boys in every
subject and are better behaved in the
classroom.
Some sociologists have argued that the
reason for this is a generalised CRISIS OF
MASCULINITY experienced by young men.

17. Assess sociological explanations
of the different crime rates of
men and women