Essay on Criminal Justice and Violent Female Offenders part 3
Essay on Criminal Justice and Violent Female Offenders part 2
Violent female crimes occupy a small percentage compared with men, it amounts 7-10%. Motives of committing crimes also significantly differ. Violent female offenders usually commit crimes because of jealousy, revenge, envy, and desire to get rid of the victim. That is, for the most part emotionally charged character. Many crimes are committed by women on the basis of clearly defined wrongful behavior of victims (“Gender and Crime – Differences Between Male And Female Offending Patterns”, 2004).
In recent years, there is an increase of such violent crimes committed by women as murder and robbery. An interesting fact is that there is also a rise of violent crimes committed with particular cruelty, it can be explained by the change of the social role of women, the destruction of the family resulting with psychological insecurities of women, lack the necessary parenting skills, women’s dependence on various kinds of unfavorable prevailing circumstances.
Infanticide is the deprivation of life of a newborn baby. This category of crimes are committed, above all, by young women, who are poorly adapted to modern life, with no means of livelihood and homes. Infanticide occur most often in rural areas where there is not enough of medical equipment for early diagnosis and termination of unwanted pregnancies. Certain effects are caused by the inaccessibility of contraceptives, illiteracy of girls – teenagers, lack of elementary sex education.
Criminological characteristics of violent female offenders are also specific. As a rule, there is a predominance of older persons, compared with men, despite the fact that in general, in recent years there has been a rejuvenation of criminals. The educational level of female offenders has always been higher than that of male criminals. However, there has been noted a growth in number of offenders among persons with higher education.
These are just some of the features and differences of female criminality. Over the recent years there has been a significant increase in total crime and female crimes. Despite the differences, female criminality reflects the general patterns of crime and its changes. It acts as a subsystem of general crime and is organically linked with it.
Discussing female criminality, we cannot stop mentioning their lives after being convicted. American prisons detain more people than any other country in the world. Overview of the sources shows that the most relevant to the United States prison system are issues of adaptation of convicts in prison, serving a sentence gender issues, as well as racial and ethnic confrontation in prisons.
It should be noted that scientists are actively studying the process of adaptation and adaptive behavior of inmates in prisons. So, Donald Clemmer in his book “Prison Community” highlights the phenomenon of “prisonization”, ie long-term adaptation to the subculture of incarcerated prisoners, and associates it with the ideals and values of the prison environment. Analyzing the essence of this phenomenon, D. Clemmer does not consider it as an absolute force, and connects it with the prison rules, regulations, and value orientations. Hence, he concludes different ability to adapt to prison. D. Clemmer believes that depending on the values of the prison there are differences among prisoners in the degree of adaptation to the prison subculture.
Criminologist G. Sykes found that in prison interests in maintaining control over most of the prisoners can match between administration and prison leaders. D. Irwin and D. Cressey were studying causes of the difficulties that raised in neutralizing the negative effects of adaptation due to the influence of different value orientations in the criminal groups in prison.
Analyzing the impact of different values on the behavior of prisoners, J. Galtung tries to uncover the typical reaction of prisoners to the ratio of the prison subculture. The author notes that the prisoner is actively seeking contact with other prisoners, and stresses the importance of mutual solidarity.
- Hofmann has made an attempt to reveal the nature and role of interactive processes within the total institutions, including the emphasis on the possible values and consumerism of nature of the relationship between staff and inmates of penitentiary institutions, as these groups have different stereotypes and live in different cultural worlds. E. Hofmann believes that prison, like any other institution eliminates the total self, goals, plans, and positive adaptation among convicted by the acquisition of new subcultural patterns of life in prison. In this regard, he revealed not only the primary mechanisms (immediately after getting to jail), but also secondary (aimed at survival in prison and turning under the influence of its subcultures) adaptation of the prisoners. Components of the motivational sphere have significant impact on the adaptation and behavior of the prisoners (Langton, Truman, 2014).
Conclusion
Violence is defined as: 1) the use of physical force to someone; 2) the use of force, forced impact on someone, something; 3) the harassment, abuse of power, lawless use of force.
Criminal behavior of women has always been perceived as a less serious issue than male criminal behavior. Historically, females tend to commit minor crimes and have amounted only a small quantity of the overall number of offenders. Ten though women remain a relatively small amount of all prisoners, there is a trend in rising amount of female offenders, their participation in crimes connected with violent, and have inhibited the increase of gender-specific programs addressing the problem.
During 2012, in the whole country, law enforcement made 12,196,959 arrests (traffic violations are not included), 26.2% of them were of females.
In 2010, courts with juvenile jurisdiction held an estimated 1,368,200 law-breaking cases in 2010, 28% of them were with female offenders. In general, female delinquency caseload raised at an average rate of 2 percent per year between 1985 and 2010, while the average rate increased for less than 1 percent per year for males. The number of female convicts increased by 10.9% between midyear 2010 and 2013. In same period, the male inmate population declined for 4.2% (Carson, 2014).
There are several theories that justify the backlog of female criminality to male criminality. Most of them are of historical interest only. A. Quetelet explained less criminality of women not only by their physical weakness, but also by the detachment from public life, closed in a circle of family responsibilities. However, with the inclusion of more women in public life and professional activities, as well as in periods of rising crime, the proportion of female crime in the general mass has always remained small.
Another explanation for this phenomenon has been suggested by representatives of the anthropological school C. Lombroso. Lower intensity of female criminality is associated with the peculiarities of the female body and nature, to a certain extent with her “biological immaturity.”
Most women have dominative qualities that prevent the commission of crimes, since the motivation of female behavior is usually associated with the family. They are protection of the family, the welfare, physical and psychological comfort of the family. In this case, responsibility for the family is often also carried out by a woman. Because of these reasons, the life of a woman is a little incompatible with criminal activity, because she is aware of her responsibility for children, for the integrity and welfare of the family. Victims of violent crimes committed by women, as a rule, are husbands, roommates, children and close relatives, which is also connected with a fact that women are more attached to the family than men.
In general, considering the problem of specificity of female criminality, we should proceed from the premise that any criminal behavior, regardless of who commits it, is social and historical phenomenon, the qualitative features of which are reflected in the cultural space. Therefore, gender differences of crimes should be considered based on the characteristics of culture.
Disparity in the treatment of criminals involved in the system of criminal justice has been the subject of a substantial number of research over the past decades. Probably, the most compelling evidence of disparity is found in the demographics among the convicts in federal and state prisons in the United States. Most prisoners in our nation’s prisons are men, mostly black or Hispanic. These disparities in rates of imprisonment, which have been noted for more than three decades, have made researchers to focus on the sentencing stage of criminal justice process. They also have led policymakers search for ways in order to constrain judicial discretion while sentencing.
There are two thoughts on the issue if criminal justice system has a gender bias and if men and women are treated differently in courts and police.
The first one is chivalry thesis, where chivalry is treating others, mostly women with courtesy, respect and sympathy. According to chivalry theory women are treated more leniently by the system of criminal justice than men. Male chivalry means that often police are less likely to charge females, and courts tend to give them a lighter sentence, even in situations when they have committed the same crimes as men.
The second theory is called double deviance theory. According to this theory, criminal justice system treats women more harshly because they are guilty of being doubly deviant. They deviated from norms accepted by society by breaking the law and, at the same time, deviated from gender norms, which tell how woman should behave.
Many female offenders feel that they have been treated harshly by the system of criminal justice. They perceive it as a male-dominated institution and feel their treatment has been unjust and unsympathetic (Heidensohn, Silvestri, 2012).
After arrest, women more often than men are cautioned instead of being charged. They are less likely to be committed for trial or remanded in custody. Female offenders have more chances to be discharged or to be given a community sentence than men and less likely to be sentenced to prison or fined. Often, women sent to prison get shorter sentences than men. This information suggests that the system of criminal justice does treat woman more leniently. Though, we also need to take into account the seriousness of committed crime and difference in crime history. Female offences are usually less serious and women are less likely to have criminal records (Bryant, 2011).
Female prisoners constantly attract the attention of the media. However, many experts in the United States claim that research in this area is carried out on the insufficient level. Amount of research devoted to the problem of women in prison is just enough to set the existing specific difference in the performance and the serving of sentences in comparison with men. In general, women’s community in the United States is characterized by a smaller prison violence, more harmony, less destructive nature of the subculture as compared to men of the prison community (Nagel, Johnson, 2004).
Studies have shown that special social programs for women are more effective than imprisonment. The implementation of such programs on female offenders significantly reduces repeat offenses. Measures such as house arrest, intensive support are also an effective alternative to imprisonment in case of direct exposure. Taking into consideration these facts, we can make the conclusion that special programs and organizations for female offenders are very important and useful. For example, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP): Female Offenders provides female offenders with appropriate help to meet the physical, psychological and social needs of this group. National Directory of Programs for Women with Criminal Justice Involvement provides information about programs available in each state that provide assistance and guidance for women involved in the justice system (Morash, Bynum, Koons, 1998). Thus, the modern American penal science focuses not on punitive, but humanistic traditions in the correction of female convicts.
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