Women are expected to live and act according to what our criminal justice system assume. This is a stereotypical woman who is at home or at work with family and domestic chores to do. This shows that a woman offending is seen as abnormal and out of character. Some would say that women committing crime is on the increase because they are often left to fend for themselves with children to bring up and no financial stability from a husband or breadwinner. Allison Morris 1979 goes on to say that “women may be more involved in crime now than 20 years ago, indeed there are good reasons why this would be so: unemployment, low wages, poverty”
The Chivalry theory also relates to women’s treatment in prisons. It is said that woman may have more opportunities in prison than men even though women are more likely to be given a prison sentence than a man. It is said that this is because it is unfeminine for a girl to commit crime where as ‘boys will be boys’. When a young male commits a crime some would say that the criminal justice system, see it as part of growing up. But women tend to go to prison for lesser crimes. In the prisons the women get opportunities to get an education and training. They are given the chance to domesticate themselves more by taking on extra responsibilities in and around the prison, such as cooking and cleaning. Even though men also have these opportunities, the prison does not see it as being important for men to do this as the prison service wants the women to get in touch with their feminine side and not act masculine by being a criminal. It was only in the 1920’s that the chairman of the prison commission Ruggles-Brise “pointed to the inhumanity of treating men and women in the same way” sited in Morris 1987 (Camp 1974). He saw how men and women are different physically and mentally and says how women suffer much more than men emotionally when in prison.
In murder cases women often get tougher sentences than men, as often the murder is pre meditated. It is said that men usually kill out of anger and they kill spontaneously where as women think and plan their murder. Women are the weaker sex, and have to use non-violent means to kill their victim. This is classed as pre-meditated murder and the courts find it to be very much out of character and do not give a light sentence for it. Natasha Walter (2002), a writer for The Independent, has a perfect example of what some would say the criminal justice system being biased would be. A man called David Hampson killed his wife Claire by smashing her over the head with a hammer, he got six years for manslaughter. His reason for the murder to the judge was that his wife was nagging him for years and the judge accepted this as a reasonable excuse to be provoked to kill someone. The second case in the article was that of Zoora Shah who killed her boyfriend Mohammed, by putting arsenic in his food. She was given a life sentence for the murder, even though the court heard how she was exploited, by her boyfriend, to be a prostitute and he beat her regularly. She could not speak English, and had nowhere to escape to with her children. The courts do not see this as an accepted reason for her to kill her husband. Because Zoora had not killed her boyfriend in the spur of the moment the courts saw her as a double deviant women. This seems to portray that the courts think it is more acceptable for a man to lose his temper than for a women to keep calm and think of another mean of violence. Some would agree that aggressiveness in a man is acceptable and not in women.
Double Jeopardy can show how women are treated very differently to men by the courts. When a person is proven innocent for murder in a court of law then that person can never be tried again for the murder even though new evidence may arise which can prove them guilty such as DNA evidence. For example the Stephen Lawrence case found in (2002), the two boys accused for the murder of Stephen Lawrence were recently acquitted of the murder and released. They will not be allowed to be tried again for the murder even if new evidence emerges to prove them guilty. If the Double Jeopardy rule was abolished, some say the boys would still not have a fair second trial anyway because of the press and publicity branding them to be murderers, which could affect a jury’s decision. Double Jeopardy will also ensure thorough work from the police as Fitzpatrick, J. 2001, agrees; “The rule encourages diligence and probity in the investigation of crime, because the prosecuting authorities know they have only one chance;” (Fitzpatrick, J, 2001). Double Jeopardy does not prevent a defendant walking away totally innocent after a trial; John Fitzpatrick explains, “The rule has always been narrowly applied, so that, for example, it does not preclude using the same facts to prosecute a person for a different offence. The leading case in modern times is Connelly v DPP (1964), in which the House of Lords allowed the conviction of a man for robbery - although he had previously been acquitted of a murder which had been committed during the robbery. No new facts were alleged or new evidence called.” The defendant is allowed to be charged with another offence that may have been committed along with that murder, in the above case robbery. Although Double Jeopardy has been a law for 800 years, there has recently been talk of changing the law. Some would agree that it is old fashioned and needs to be altered so that the prosecution can have another chance with new evidence. But if the rule was to be changed or abandoned then there may be wrongful convictions as a result of retrials, particularly perhaps where the defendant, because of the publicity surrounding murder cases, might not get a fair second trial as explained in the Stephen Lawrence case.
To summarise how women may be treated different to men by the courts or prisons with Chivalry or Double Jeopardy, it appears that the criminal justice system may be more lenient towards men for particular crimes, for example murder or theft as they have a stereotypical idea of how a woman should be. Double Jeopardy may be seen as an unfair rule but the police should not be given an excuse not to do their job properly. Defendants who have been proven not guilty will not be given a fair second trial because our obsession with the media and other peoples lives. There are still unexamined factors, which may or may not determine the question of equality by our Criminal Justice System. In the essay the topics have given a brief overview of how men and women will never be treated equally in a ‘male dominated’ society.
Bibliography
Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2002), The Penal System
Fitzpatrick, J. (21/6/2001),
Messerschmidt, J. (1997), Crime as structured action: Gender, Race, Class and Crime
Moore, S. Investigating Deviance
Walklate, S. (1995), Gender and Crime and Introduction
Walter, N. (1/11/1999), The Independent Newspaper
WWW.Guardian .co.uk/social
