Role Of Female Offenders In The Criminal Justice System

Improved Essays
The aim of this essay is to discuss the treatment of female and male offenders in the criminal justice system. On Friday, 7th April 2017 the prison population of England and Wales stood at 86,554. Held in 12 prisons across England, female offenders represent 5% of the overall prison population. The first section of the essay will be focused on early classical theorists as well as feminists whilst the second section will focus on the treatment of women in the criminal justice system.
Early explanations of female criminality viewed crime and human behaviour in more general ways, whereas traditional explanations tend to view women and their criminality as a subordinate to men. Otto Pollak (1950) suggests that women are treated more leniently

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    During the 1990’s Britain in particular experienced increases in the prison population and as a result introduced more prison construction projects. Sudbury gives evidence for this, through a report by The Crisis in Women’s Prisons’ Press Release reporting that, “[w]hile women make up a small proportion of those incarcerated, their rates of imprisonment have multiplied faster than men’s…” (Sudbury 164). Through this, although women make up a small population of those in prison in Britain, they are still the fastest demographic to be incarcerated disproportionately. Along with the increase of women incarceration rates abroad, “[m]ultinational prison corporations have fueled this expansion through an aggressive strategy of pursuing foreign markets through sophisticated marketing techniques” (Sudbury 167).…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    . It can be and is important to note and decipher that causes of criminality cannot always be attributed to one identifiable or attributed cause as causes of criminality is multifaceted. For example, in striving to determine why women offenders face the onset of imprisonment and incarceration, feminist criminological theory asserts that women turn to crime and criminality as a result of inequality dominated by patriarchy. It can be suggested that women are marginalized within society as a result of pending and ongoing patriarchy. Women bear different challenges in terms of criminality and incarceration.…

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Private Prison Patriarchy

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Within the system, a woman demonstrates all of her roles that not only pertain to her within society, but also those she plays within the prison itself. In normal society, the woman is both a wife, a mother, a form of a teacher, a civilian, and a caregiver or provider, whereas she is all this plus a prisoner, a criminal, a menace, a inmate, and ultimately a woman. Demonstrating all the different roles a woman plays within both society and the private prison systems contributes to the association that many of the women (in both circumstances) often have to deal with oppression from the opposite sex in both the everyday formalities of society as so within the private prisons, therefore demonstrating the sociological theory of patriarchy in the…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Sentencing Disparity

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Considering the three types of sentencing disparities mention earlier with regards to women. First, there is a great deal of evidence regarding the number of women facing criminal sentencing as compared to the number of men. Based on federal statistics, which are mostly reliable attainable, the gap between the numbers of male and female offenders is sizeable and that in 2008-the most recent year which figures are available of the total 76,678 offenders sentenced in the federal courts 87.2% (63,515) were men, and 12.8%…

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Prisoners in a masculine penitentiary populations are accountable for considerable most of the severe offenses than feminine inmates, negating the concept that woman inmates are filtered more proficiently and as a result those who do go to penitentiary are more of a lawbreaker than their male counterparts. It is obvious that the variances amongst female and male correctional facilities are a result of the interaction among correctional institutional characteristics. The simplification that feminine offenders are turn out to be more like masculine offenders is not completely correct. In its place, it is better to say that masculine and feminine inmate subcultures are continuing to follow different lines of development. Therefore, the point of gender distinction in inmate subcultures has not automatically lessened over time.…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Incarcerated Mothers

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The following essay will critically discuss the appropriateness of incarcerated mothers to maintain contact with their children. An emphasis will be put on the consequences of such contact on both the mother’s and the child’s wellbeing. Thus, the focus will be placed on the type of effects produced by these changes in the children’s familial life while also exploring the impact on their social life through shame, bullying and social stigma (Kjellstrand et al. 2012). Additionally, this paper will address other adjacent themes such as costs of visitation and legislative norms of visitation.…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    What is Gender Gap in Offender Sentencing? Disparity in gender offender sentencing revolves around female defendants irrespective of backgrounds reciving less sever sentences as compared to male defendants in the same category of offence as well as having similar backgrounds. The disparities also touch in the disagreements on whether women are actually favoured as compared to men in offender sentencing. Therefore, gender gaps in offender sentencing can be explained by the pervasiveness found in gender stereotyping associated with offender sentencing.…

    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women In American Prisons

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The population of women in American prisons is staggeringly high, more than any other country in the world. There could be many different aspects that lead women to have such a large prison population in the united states, more so than simply that America has a large population of women in general. One possible explanation could be that in America women are seen more as equals to men then in some other countries. With women being seen as just as capable as men judges may be less lenient on women then judges of other countries, giving them the same sentences as men. Another possibility could be that perhaps America doesn’t see women as equals to men, and expect women to fir certain roles within society.…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Implicit biases, bias in judgment and/or behavior influenced by unconscious negative stereotypes and attitudes about people based on harmful narratives about race and crime in the nation, [citation] perpetuate the racial disparity in the juvenile justice system today. Evidence suggests that many Americans are subject to consciously or subconsciously associate minority adolescents, specifically black youth, with crime and delinquency. In fact, the media and their constant portrayal of minorities as violent offenders and drug dealers further this notion [citation]. Nonetheless, within the juvenile justice system, racialized assumptions and attitudes tend to reduce sympathy for those accused, suggesting that key decision makers in the juvenile process may act on racial and ethnic biases. For example, recent studies cite evidence of bias in perceptions of culpability, a risk of re-offending, and deserved punishment for adolescents when the decision-maker knew the race of the juvenile beforehand [citation].…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Background: Women who are incarcerated while pregnant, receive no birthing education while in most prisons in the United States. In many states, incarcerated women in labor are transported to the nearest birthing center and are shackled to the labor bed with one armed guard inside the room and another outside the door. They often labor alone because they are not allowed to have a support person. The nurse on duty, is the only form of support they depend upon. Unfortunately, evidence indicates that many of the nurses have a punitive attitude toward the incarcerated patient, resulting in inadequate care.…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Historically, female offenders were imprisoned in a different building within a male prison. Women had to deal with sexual abuse, physical abuse, lack of services, and inadequate privacy. Prison guards were usually male because the characteristics of a prison guard were to mean and strong something society thought women lacked. Male guards had little understanding of female offenders and therefore led to brutal punishment. In 1873, the first all-female prison in the Unites States opened up and was identified as the Indiana Women’s Prison.…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women Of Color In Prison

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Women of color’s health, as they enter the prison, is commonly impaired, and this impairment only increases as their time within the prison does because of its overcrowded conditions. These health issues become more severe in these environments as they are often rat infested, are scarce on water, are short on medical attendants, which ultimately, make emergency evacuations nearly impossible (Women Behind Bars). According to Stevenson’s firsthand account, “women had no privacy…there were dark corners and hallways-terrifying spaces at Tukwiler where women could be beaten or sexually assaulted” (238). Many of the women come into the prisons with communicable diseases like STDS, along with other health issues that only grow more severe, as “sick…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this story we are not just present the imprisonment of women, but also it portrays the point of view of law in terms of other committed crimes. “Have you anything to say?” [...] Then as the woman in the dock showed every indication of having a great deal to say, this would be followed up with a hasty “Yes, yes; but I have nothing to do with that. I am here to administer the law as it stands” (Sharp,…

    • 1194 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When women’s place in society change there will be similarities to that of men, and their crime patterns will also be alike. Female criminality is also motivated by the same as man criminality. According to Freda Adler’s book, Sisters in Crime, while an eagerness for self-sufficiency, women have altered the foundation which had guarded men in conventional dominance of being in control.…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Criminology has historically sought to explain the causes of crime, with the attention being primarily focused on why men commit a crime. There have been numerous theories that sought to explain why males commit crime however little attention has been paid as to why females commit crimes. With women becoming more liberated and active outside of the home, women were more likely to encounter the criminal justice system. This increased contact led to the criminal justice system shaping feminism. Criminology has influenced feminism by showing that men and women can both be held responsible for their actions when committing crimes.…

    • 1498 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays