ABSTRACT
Men were found to receive considerably harsher sentences in relatively similar cases.
Hormonal imbalances suffered by men – and discussed in Chapter 5 – do not normally influence either their conviction or their sentence. Women, on the other hand, can successfully plead such imbalances even in the most serious cases where they kill another human being. This situation is undoubtedly advantageous for the individual woman involved but for women in general it allows the continuation of the enduring biologically positivist notion that has been in existence since at least Lombroso that they are incapable of controlling themselves and that their actions can be explained through – either physical or psychological – medical reasoning (see Wilczynski and Morris, 1993). The implication of this widely used reasoning would be that women should be treated for this ‘sickness’ rather than being punished. It thus removes from women the possibility that they might rationally choose to commit criminal behaviour in the socio-economic circumstances in which they find themselves.
