Are bad girls bad, as bad as boys, or simply “more equal” than boys? Are they perhaps smarter, not as visible, or more likely assumed to be innocent?
NationMaster.com [no date identified]
Are women criminals getting a free pass from worldwide justice systems?
If only 12.5 percent of women surveyed think that women have equal rights, they could point to the punishments meted out to women miscreants as proof.
The worldwide total of prisoners as of 2002 is 8,570,051, but only 4.4 percent (377,082) of those prisoners are women. The difference shows up just as drastically in prosecutions. Total prosecutions among the nations who reported to United Nations was 23,841,769, but women made up only 1,036,710 of that number – less than 5 percent of all prosecutions.
Is this because women are getting a free pass or are they simply less inclined to be criminals? That matter is still being hotly debated among sociologists, psychologists and criminologists. Outside of academia, however, there are a few statistics that you can use to fuel your own theories, or just for fun, disprove those of others…. (Full Story)
So, what is the truth about crime and punishment of women?
The statistics identified in the article and elsewhere show wide variations from nation to nation. All of the statistics shown or pointed to in the article are based on figures that are consequences of pro-women bias of national justice systems. Therefore, those figures are official, but does that mean they are objective and true, that they reflect the true extent of women’s crimes?
The only thing we know is that those statistics reflect punishment dealt out to women, and that the severity and extent of punishment for women’s crimes is the final result of bias in the justice system. It reflects convictions and sentences resulting from guilty-verdicts. Those statistics do not give the slightest indication of whether women are as often and equally severely being dealt with for committing crimes. Given that women are as human as men are, there should not be the large discrepancies between men and women’s convictions or between the severity of the sentencing for convicted male and female criminals.
The article does identify an alternative view, a view not based on variously biased justice-system statistics:
One sociologist, Otto Pollack, maintained in his book, the Criminality of Women, that women commit just as many crimes as men, but that they don’t get caught as often. Their crimes, he claimed were simply easier to hide. Based on mostly anecdotal information, he also asserted that the justice system is easier on women than on men.
Otto Pollack has a point, but, unless one reads the book to find out the dimensions of it, the article at NationMaster.com does not give much of a clue of the extent to which Otto Pollack’s figures come closer to the truth than justice-system statistics do.
Warren Farrell has tried to identify the dimensions of the truth about crime and punishment with respect to women’s criminality. He reported on his findings in a few of his books and is generally in agreement with what the NationMaster article reports about Otto Pollack’s views on bad girls. Overall, contrary to what justice-system statistics throughout the world identify, women are as human as men are and commit crimes of equal severity in about the same proportions as men do, but there is where things end. Bad girls are as human as bad boys.
The ratios of the culpability of the sexes take into account only convicted and incarcerated criminals. The disparity of the ratios exists because, compared to men, women are,
- Far less likely to be suspected of having committed a crime, and, if suspected,
- Far less likely to be indicted, and, if indicted,
- Far more likely to have their crime plea-bargained down to a less severe category of crime, and, when having successfully done that,
- Far less likely to be brought to trial, and, if brought to trial,
- Far less likely to be judged guilty, and, once found guilty of crimes of equal severity to those committed by men,
- Far less likely to be sentenced to being incarcerated, and, once incarcerated,
- Far more likely to be serving a shorter sentence for a crime of equal severity, and, once serving a sentence,
- Far more likely to be released early on parole.
We don’t know how many women criminals there are. All we know is that women are as human as are men and as likely as men are to commit crimes. There is one thing that justice-system statistics reflect truthfully and objectively: throughout the world, vastly fewer women criminals are serving time in jails or prisons.
Judicial crime statistics are the worst possible source of objective crime statistics, as they indicate only one of the consequences of judicial bias, namely how many prisoners of either sex were caught, brought to trial, convicted, found guilty and sentenced to serve time in incarceration. Judicial crimes statistics pertaining to both sexes are a good indicator of judicial gender bias. (More)
#FeministJurisprudence #Judiciary #MensIssues
See also:
- Healdsburg man stabbed in neck
- Social Justice Warriors lack Objectivity, Knowledge
- Female innocence is what the media and courts say it is
