ABSTRACT
Several penal reformers have been less concerned about whether or not gender factors actually do affect a woman’s chances of receiving a custodial penalty, and more concerned to argue that, for a variety of reasons, gender considerations should shape sentencing and that women in particular should not receive prison sentences, unless their crimes meet certain criteria of ‘dangerousness’ and/or ‘seriousness’.32 The reasons marshalled in support of claims that women should not normally be imprisoned are several and this author does not find that any of them provides convincing arguments that women qua women should be sentenced differently to men, because, in each argument, the central construct is not gender-specific. Instead, the four main constructs central to the arguments for the differential sentencing of men and women are, respectively: risk, legitimacy of punishment; double regulation; and role worth.
