Should gender play such a significant role in accounting for differential treatment through the criminal justice process? (Research Paper Sample)

Criminology
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Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic rise in the amount of women under supervision of the criminal justice. As a matter of fact, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2002) revealed that in 1990 approximately 600,000 women were in jails or prisons, on parole or on probation. A decade later, the figure had increased up to one million women. The rate of imprisonment for women is lower than that for men (about 58 in 100,000 women opposed to 896 men), but the number of women incarcerated in the last three decades or so has doubled the rate for men (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002). It is worth noting that despite the figures, there has been no corresponding swell in women’s criminality. Nonetheless, this trend has ignited the debate on the role of gender in our criminal justice process. This paper shows that gender ought to play a significant role in accounting for differential treatment.
The rising internment of women seems to be an outcome of larger forces that continue to shape America’s crime policy. Some of these forces include the shift legal realm toward the view of wrongdoing as individual pathology, war on drugs, ignoring the social and structural causes of crime and others. Seemingly there is accord among criminal justice experts that few women create a risk to members of the public, but present-day sentencing models suppose that everyone charged with/convicted of a crime is a serious threat. According to Leonard (2002), current sentencing laws are increasingly based on male characteristics as well as male crime. As such, they are unsuccessful in taking into account the reality of women’s characteristics, lives, responsibilities as well as roles in crime. Understanding gender-based traits is vital to gender-responsive policies in criminal justice process. Consequently, the considerable rise in the number of women under supervision calls for attention to the status of women in our justice system as well as the particular situations they encounter. As a matter of fact, recent research has pointed out that these offenders differ from the males in such factors as pathways to crime plus personal histories. It has been found that women offenders are likely under-educated, low income and unskilled with infrequent employment histories. In addition, they are suspiciously women of color. According to Belknap (2001), they are also less likely than their male counterparts to have been criminalized of crimes involving property and or drugs. Time and again, their property offenses are financially driven and motivated by poverty or abuse of drugs. Altogether, the criminal justice system is based on male characteristics and fails to address women in certain areas. This explains a reason why gender should play a significant function in accounting for differential treatment via the criminal justice process.
In addition, several feminist writers have expressed and documented the patriarchal setting of our society as well as the variety of ways through which the related values serve masculine needs. As a matter of fact, science seems to be tainted by typically male approaches to social reality. Females exist as other, meaning that they exist in their difference from male counterparts or the normal (Wald, 2001). Nonetheless, women in the justice system characteristically come into the fold in ways dissimilar from those of male counterparts. This is due partially to differences in ways into criminality and crime patterns, and partially to the gendered impact of the war on crime. Similar to feminist writers, contemporary theorists suppose that most crime theories were structured by male criminologists to spell out male crime (Belknap, 2001). As a result, the criminal justice systems lack a laid down policy on the management or supervision of female offenders. Bloom & Owen & Covington (2003) reported that many managers as well as line staff claimed that, in the justice process, they habitually manage women offenders based on policies and measures developed for their male counterparts. What is more, they expressed challenges in modifying the policies to come up with a more fitting and effective answer to women’s behavior within a correctional setting. On the whole, there are subtle differences between these two genders and our criminal justice process ought to recognize and integrate them accordingly. For instance, women encounter life events that appear to be specific to their gender. These include sexual abuse, sexual assault, and responsibility of being a primary caregiver as well as domestic violence. As a result, in coming up with appropriate processes for women in criminal justice system it becomes crucial that we concede and understand the significance of gender –related dynamics intrinsic in any society.
In an age where sexism is rife, a gender dynamic frequently encountered is that something pronounced gender neutral or genderless is, indeed, male oriented. This same phenomenon is widespread throughout the society, and occurs in racist society as well; race neutral normally meaning white. Regardless of claims to the contrary, masculine epistemologies are fundamentally built upon values that uphold masculine desires and needs. Practically, all others become invisible and this can be seen as a variety of oppression. Bloom & Owen & Covington (2003), asserts that the standard criminal justice process can have weighty effects on women with histories of trauma, mental illness and abuse. For instance, female convicts are more than 3 times as likely as their male counterparts to testify having experienced sexual or physical abuse in their lives. One of the hypotheses behind this quandary is that criminal justice process often functions as triggers to re-traumatize females who have ...