Gender Disparities In The Criminal Justice System

In the context of gender disparity in criminal sentencing, some may think that having said that criminal courts are more lenient on women is just one’s opinion. In fact, a lot of researches and data suggest that there is a strong different in gender in the sentencing outcomes. Men are sentenced to longer prison terms than women. Men are 42% more likely to be sentenced to prison. Critics suggest that federal courts show more leniency on female defendants in a lot of court cases. They are less likely to imprison or confine women and tend to give women shorter sentences than men. A research states that men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do. Researches show that women are twice as

The author’s studies indicate that the criminal justice system choose majority of their targets and suspects predominantly by race. According to studies conducted by the U. S Department of Justice, the imprisonment rate by race per 100,000 residents over 3,000 black males were imprisoned in the year 2000 compared to white males imprisonment rate of less than 500. This shows that conviction of crime, robbery, murder, and other violence and drug related crimes has a clear discrepancy across racial groups. This information might serve as the conclusion to our presentation which supports the question of whether the criminal justice system is

Typically female prisons are less violent compared to male prisons. A majority of women that are incarcerated are there because of drug or property offenses. Women usually commit less violent crimes compared to men who are more likely to commit violent crimes. “Because most women serve time for drug offenses rather than violent crimes, they tend to serve shorter prison sentences, (Study.com).” The female prison population in France and the U.S. is lower then that of the male population. Women who are incarcerated tend to have a higher chance of being mentally/emotionally unstable.

Women population don't get offer the same programs as male . The small population of women in prison and jail is used to justify the lack of diverse education, Vocational and other programs available to incarcerated women . This is also effect the specialization in treatment and failure to segregate the more serious and mentally ill offenders from the less serious offenders. In

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New

No government system can fully be indiscriminate against two groups, and this is true in our legal system’s final destination: prison. In prison, the two binary genders face unique and distinct problems that the other gender may not face. While they both face different issues the biggest ones each faces leads to increased likelihood of recidivism, or going back to prison. The issues that the genders face in prison is noticeable, with considerable differences between men and women, yet there does not seem to be a consensus of whether or not these problems warrant change.

When it comes to the sentencing of convicted criminals, there are racial, ethnic and gender disparities. In 1984 the Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statements of the Sentencing Reform Act, or short for SRA, was designed to eliminate sentencing disparities and states clearly that race, gender, ethnicity, and

People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today. Along with African-American/Blacks, the Hispanic population is underrepresented at both the state and federal levels while the Caucasian/White population are underrepresented (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018).

The prison population is overwhelmingly male and disproportionately minority. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 25% of state prisoners are white, 38% are black and 21% are Hispanic, revealing a degree of disproportion when compared to the general population where 62% are white, 13% are black and 17% are Hispanic. Racial disparity with regards to imprisonment has been a feature of the prison system from decades yet this disparity has increased over time. African Americans today are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that is 5.1 times the imprisonment of whites. African Americans comprise 31% of individuals arrested for drug violations. In eleven states, at least 1 in 20 black adults are in prison. Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same crime. One in nine black children and one in 38 Latino children have an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 57 white children. Higher rates of incarceration in minority communities have lead to the destruction of the family

Unfortunately, there are racial disparities in the United States in the legal system. Prison sentences imposed on African American males in the federal system are nearly 20 percent longer than white males convicted of similar crimes. The 1994 Crime Bill signed by President Clinton established mandatory minimum sentences. African American and Latino offenders sentenced in state and federal courts face greater odds of incarceration than white offenders who are in similar situations and receive longer sentences than whites in some jurisdictions. Research has shown that race plays a significant role in determination on which homicide cases resulted in death sentences.

For defendants who were sentenced to prison, there generally was no gender disparity in the length of the sentence. There were disparities in sentencing for some individual types of crime, however. For example, female defendants convicted of theft received longer prison sentences than male defendants convicted of theft. Women convicted of “other property offenses” – a category of crimes that includes arson, receiving stolen property and breaking and entering — received shorter prison sentences.

A recent study of sentencing decisions in Pennsylvania (Steffensmeier et al., 1998) identified significant interrelationships among race, gender, age, and sentence severity. The authors of this study found that each of the three offender characteristics had significant direct effects on sentence outcomes and that the characteristics interacted to produce substantially harsher sentences for one category of offenders—young black males. This study responds to Steffensmeier et al.'s (1998:789) call for “further research analyzing how race effects may be mediated by other factors.” We replicate their research approach, examining the intersections of the effects of race, gender, and age on sentence outcomes. We extend their analysis in three ways: We examine sentence outcomes in three large urban jurisdictions; we include Hispanics as well as blacks and test for interactions between ethnicity, age, and gender; and we test for interactions between race/ethnicity, gender, and employment status. Our results are generally—although not entirely—consistent with the results of the Pennsylvania study. Although none of the offender characteristics affects the length of the prison sentence, each has a significant direct effect on the likelihood of incarceration in at least one of the jurisdictions. More importantly, the four offender characteristics interact to produce harsher sentences

Fast forward to the present day, we have the Ferguson, Mike Brown of Emmitt Till’s still occurring in our justice system. A person must view the criminal justice threw a godly telescope to see the inequalities that exit, and need to come to the forefront of our government, and the population worldwide. Sentencingproject.org statistically show that African American men, women, and juvenile are arrested more often than any other races across the nations. This report will prove, and argues that racial disparity in the justice system is at large in our system. This research paper will further explain, and presents evidence that display the presence of racial bias in the criminal justice system in America.

Women of color are the most targeted, prosecuted, and imprisoned women in the country and rapidly increasing their population within the prison systems. According to Nicholas Freudenberg, 11 out of every 1000 women will end up incarcerated in their lifetime, the average age being 35, while only five of them are white, 15 are Latinas, and 36 are black. These two groups alone make up 70 percent of women in prison, an astonishing rate compared to the low percentage comprise of within the entire female population in the country (1895). Most of their offenses are non-violent, but drug related, and often these women come from oppressive and violent backgrounds, where many of their struggles occurred directly within the home and from their own family.

Her first hypothesis is the equal treatment hypothesis. The equal treatment hypothesis is where there is no gender discrimination in crime processing, such as for when a woman commits a crime, she gets charged the same if a man were to do it, by law enforcement. Her next hypothesis is the chivalry hypothesis, which states that there is in fact gender discrimination in the criminal justice legal system against men compared to women and that men are treated more harshly whereas women are treated with more leniency. Her last hypothesis is the evil woman hypothesis, which states that women are treated more harshly compared to men being treated with more leniency. The reasoning behind the evil woman hypothesis was that woman have violated gender roles as well as laws, which is consistent with hostile sexism. Women may receive more assistant and help post prison compared to men since women typically are not as psychologically as stable compared to men. Men should also be offered this same options as the women are instead of being stereotyped into one category as everyone being the same as one another. People believe that more women are offered more assistance after being released from jail compared to men because men typically want to play the “tough man” role to prove that they do not need any help compared to women once being released from jail. Another factor to as why women receive more options compared to men is that women are usually more targeted by those who they may have gotten to know in jail or even prior to being in jail and also tend to be a victim rather than being a recurring