Abstract
One of the most predominant and consistent observations in the criminal justice system is that the type of law violation is often dependent on an offender’s gender. The gender gap in the severity of law violation has been in existence since time immemorial. The purpose of this study is to establish the validity of this statement. The study will be conducted by visiting the court files of the California District to gain information on the case types and the genders of the suspected criminals behind them. it will begin by first developing a hypothesis support the study question. This will be followed by performing a hypothetical analysis using a dependent and interdependent variable. From the files, it is expected that there will be more males who have been arrested and jailed for more serious crimes as compared to females. Moreover, there will be more women taken in for petty crimes than men. This is an indication that gender indeed determines the type of law violation
Introduction
In all countries with available data, females have lower rates of arrests as compared to males in almost all categories of a crime apart from prostitution. This also cuts across all ethnicities and groups and races since time immemorial. In the United States, for instance, women arrested for most crime types constitute less than 20 percent. In serious crime categories, women are much less represented. Since the 1960s, less than 10 percent of female arrests have been associated with serious crimes such as robbery and burglary, and less than 15 percent for aggravated assault and homicide.
Save for prostitution, the representation of females in such minor property crimes as forgery, embezzlement, larceny-theft, and fraud is much less. Females arrest for the above crime categories has, however, increased to between 30 to 40 percent from the mid-70s. The crimes predominantly committed by women include shoplifting, and forgery and frauds. Interestingly, these are crimes that are compatible with the domestic roles that have been traditionally associated with women. However, recent trends have been worrying as more women are being arrested. Globally, the percentage of women in prisons has been on a sharp rise as compared to their male counterparts.
On the other hand, statistics show that men are more likely to commit violent crimes and sexual offenses than their women counterparts. In addition, men also form the most likely victims of physical violence just as women are the most likely victims of domestic, sexual, and familial violence. While the figures in prisons offer a rough indication of a gender’s criminal behavior, this gender imbalance is more evident in the imprisonment rates across all countries. In Australia for instance, only 8 percent of the country’s prisoners are women. From these statistics, it is evident that gender affects the type of crimes that one commits.
This research topic tends to answer the question of the disparity witnessed in law violations by men and women across the world. The research will add to the knowledge gap on the linkages of different types of crimes to either of the genders. It will be useful for decision making on how best the criminal justice system can use the gender disparities of its offenders to design practical intervention measures to address the issues. In the field of criminology and the criminal justice system, this research is expected to change the way correctional facilities treat male offenders. It should lead to the transformation of behavior such that male offenders do not consider engaging in violent crimes as an act of masculinity and a way to fit in the society.
Literature Review
Much has been written about the association of either men or women to certain types of crime. Many scholars are in consensus that female criminals’ involvement in serious offenses is lesser than that of men. This justifies an argument advanced by Carbó et al. (2018) that women criminals potentially commit less harm. The violent acts committed by women as compared those committed by men illustrate that females do less damage to properties and less harm Getrude et al. (2020) also observe that women have a lesser propensity to repeat a crime as compared to their male counterparts. Unlike men, women are more interested in changing their values and behaviors after undergoing a punishment from the criminal justice system.
Female criminals mostly operate on a solo mission as opposed to their male counterparts who operate in gangs. This means that whenever they are involved in any criminal activity, they are hardly in groups, which most often remain permanent in the case of men. On the other hand, men tend to form more organized criminal groups that will require the collaboration of different members to carry out upscale heists for instance. Unlike men, women criminals are rarely organized into gangs with elaborate hierarchical structures (Um-e-Kalsoom, 2021). This limits the kind of criminal activities that women criminals can engage in. A lone criminal cannot rob a bank at gunpoint for instance. Such a criminal can only forge a signature or any crime that does not require complex coordination with accomplices.
The criminal justice system also has a huge role to play when it comes to the use of gender to determine the type of criminal behavior. Generally, the system is more lenient to female offenders than male criminals. This can be attributed to many factors such as pregnancy and their responsibilities on small children (Tomasi et al., 2021). Moreover, female offenders are more likely to demonstrate remorse and willingness to be rehabilitated. The leniency with which society treats them contributes to women being mostly petty offenders.
To further explain the association of gender with the type of law violation, some scholars have even gone ahead to advance various theories in an attempt to explain the phenomenon. According to the biological positivism theory, the Y chromosome that determines a male’s sex is responsible for their engagement in more violent criminal activities (Demboa et al., 2021). This theory suggests that the Y chromosome renders men helpless to themselves. However, according to Ozuru & Ogunwande (2020), this theory does not hold credible sway to explain today’s criminological circles.
However, the societies in which people live have much to do with their criminal inclinations. According to the social learning theory, men are more likely to associate with their antisocial peers as compared to their women counterparts. On the other hand, Özaşçılar & Ziyalar (2019) argue that the propensity to commit certain crimes is influenced by key experiences in the life of an individual. This argument is based on the developmental and life-course criminology theories which links an individual’s characteristics to crime causes. Incidentally, these characteristics include impulsiveness and environmental factors like religion, schooling, neighborhood, and family (Tomasi et al., 2021). Parenting is highlighted as a crucial environmental factor that also has a role in a person’s criminal behavior. Children who are exposed to maltreatment and neglect are more likely to become criminals when they grow up. Bindler & Hjalmarsson (2020) observe that these factors act differently for boys and girls. Statistically, boys are more likely to be neglected and maltreated than girls, which explains their propensity to more violent criminal acts.
The strain theory presupposes that life’s stressful and difficult circumstances can produce frustration and anger that can lead to violent crimes. Incidentally, the gender divide provides an explanation as to why men are more prone to reacting violently to such stressful strains than women (Bindler & Hjalmarsson, 2020). This theory argues that women are more likely to co-opt their reactions. Fedock & Covington (2021) pursue this idea further by exploring the edgework theory, which argues that men are more prone to engaging themselves in more risky behaviors than women. In the criminal justice system, most men are described as “risky thrill-seekers.” While at it, women who are caught up in their mess are deemed to be “at risk.” From the standpoint of this argument, women should be protected against men while men involving themselves in risk-taking should be apprehended and taken behind bars to ensure that women and other innocent men are safe.
The effects of gender on the law violation category cannot be appreciated without the involvement of psychological science. Gender role identification has co-opted some behaviors as culturally accepted characteristics that are appropriate for men and women. This is crucial to experiencing anger and the way it is being controlled and expressed. According to Razali et al. (2020), these gender divides have historically entrenched a belief that posits that masculinity should be associated with status and dominance as the natural order of things. Thus, people tend to construct their beliefs on the basis of their ethnicity, sexuality, and class. However, this often results in the reinforcement of masculinity as a dominant pattern. Indeed, these patterns can be physically observed in bravado, control and drive for power, lack of concern for others, shamelessness, and competition for recognition among peers.
By contrast, women do not display these traits the way men do. This is because they have been conditioned by society and the criminal justice system as gender in need of greater protection and, thus, should be constantly be patronized. Tariq & Sjoberg (2021) agree by observing that disproportionately, men display more anti-social behaviors when compared to women. Men are far more likely to commit sexual crimes and women are more prone to be the victims of the same (Razali et al., 2020). Such cultural adages as “boys will be boys” often contribute immensely to bad behavior in the male gender. The strengths of these studies are based on their thorough researches that consolidated different works together. However, they are mostly theoretical, without practical empirical studies to ascertain their validities.
Hypothetical Method Selection
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether gender has anything to do with the type of law violation.
H1: Even after controlling, extralegal and legal variables, female arrests and imprisonments are associated with petty and less violent crimes.
The above hypothesis allows one to explore the categories of cases for which men and women are predominantly arrested and imprisoned and consider which gender is more likely to be arrested for serious offenses. Confirmation of this hypothesis will support the objective of this study, which seeks to prove that gender determines the category of an offense that one is accustomed to. If it will prove that men are more likely to be arrested and imprisoned for more serious and violent crimes, the criminal justice systems and society should thoroughly investigate the specific reasons behind it.
Data and Variables
The data for this study will come from the court files from the Central District of California. The data set targeted contains information on all the arrests in California specific focus will be given to the arrests and incarcerations that took place between the year 2012 to 2018. Particularly, emphasis will be accorded to the category of law violations done by both men and women in California within the same period. The analysis will be done only on information that contains all the relevant variables that are under investigation. When delivering judgments, among the factors that the judges consider are prior criminal record and the seriousness of the crime. These factors play a huge role in determining the severity of sentencing of the accused. Although social characteristics and extra-legal demographic factors such as race, social class, and ethnicity also play a role, they will not be considered legitimate and relevant factors in this study. To this end, this study will employ various dependent and independent variables to prove the case.
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable is the gender of the person accused of having been engaged in the listed criminal activity. An offender will be either male or female.
Independent Variables
The independent variable will be the severity of the offenses that the criminals have been accused of committing. For purposes of this study, only six offenses will be selected. These will include robbery with violence, rape, shoplifting, forgery, drug trafficking, murder. These criminal activities will be listed from the most to the least severe and then assigned numbers with number 1 representing the most heinous while number 6 being the least dangerous crime. Effectively, the list will be as follows; Murder (1), Rape (2), Robbery with Violence (3), Drug trafficking (4), Forgery (5), and Shoplifting (6). It will also be significant to find out if the accused has a past criminal record. Therefore, past criminal records and the number of times one has been accused will be the second independent variable. Other variables such as race, age, area of residence will not be taken into consideration. Since the topic primarily seeks to relate gender to type of law violations, the severity of the cases suffice as the most important variable. The male gender will be accorded 0 unit while the female gender will be accorded 1 unit.
Conclusion
The aim of this study was to establish if gender is a factor in determining the seriousness of criminal activity. A survey across most of the criminal justice systems across the world reveals that females are mostly arrested and incarcerated for less or more petty crimes as compared to men. In addition, other than prostitution, women are not often repeated offenders. They are mostly arrested and imprisoned for such crimes as shoplifting, forgeries, and frauds. On the other hand, men are mostly in for more serious offenses. The majority of murderers, rapists and sexual offenders, robbers with violence, and drug traffickers all over the world are men. This use of gender as a determinant of a category of law violation is based on society’s construction of both women and men.
Men are supposed to be masculine, stoic, and domineering while women are expected to be humble, submissive, and soft. This helps in explaining why male criminals are mostly associated with serious offenses while female offenders are mostly in because of petty offenses. However, this is only a theoretical observation of scholars. More practical work can be done to establish the veracity of this statement by vising the criminal records of any court. The Central District Court files of California carries information on the various cases and the people behind them.
Operational Definitions
- Crime- an act punishable by law
- Felony- a crime categorized as serious
- Offense- a criminal act
- Severity- used to denote the extent of an offense
References
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