ABSTRACT

The actions of criminal women have been invariably explained – as we have seen above – with reference to them having breached the dominant societal definition of female behaviour and some claim that this deviation from the norm justifies subjecting them to increasing sanctions as they move through the system (see Carlen, 1983). Most studies have found no evidence of gender bias in sentencing (see Daly, 1994a; Heidensohn, 1996) but Kennedy (1992) has documented a criminal justice system which she observes to be generally biased against women. She found that in the case of young female offenders the system appears ostensibly to want to help them by showing them the error of their ways and to this end attempts to resocialise them into a socially acceptable gender role. The welfare interventions applied to these young women are nevertheless considerably more invasive of their private lives than any applied to young men and they tend to be treated more as sexual miscreants than criminals. It is apparent – from the above discussion – that clinical and sexual explanations of female criminality have been widely accepted even when those crimes have no clear sexual basis. In the case of male criminality such explanations have long been rejected – sometimes even when there is a clear sexual link – and there would appear to be different standards applied to explaining male and female criminality.