Girl Court
November 5, 2010
LAST MONTH, a judicial board in Britain asked judges to treat women defendants with greater lenience. The notion of special standards for women is also gaining ground here. Los Angeles County Court has seen a steep increase in female criminals in recent years, as have many jurisdictions. It now boasts of a special program especially for women.
Women convicts do face difficult circumstances, particularly as mothers. However, as the blogger Simple Justice notes, these circumstances should be viewed individually, not on the basis of sex. He writes:
When there’s a special court for women, it by definition precludes men. Some women deserve a break, having been manipulated and pressured into committing crimes, or having done so to feed their children. So do some men. But there’s no court for that.
What this perversely reflects is the inability of the criminal justice system to lose the rhetoric of blame and give every case the degree of individualized thought it deserves. There’s no reason why a woman before a criminal court shouldn’t be given the depth of scrutiny necessary to determine whether she’s an evil, malevolent person, but rather a victim of circumstance who is undeserving the typical harshness our system metes out. There’s no reason every person who comes before a court shouldn’t receive that.
— Comments —
Jesse Powell writes:
If I may comment here, I find nothing particularly wrong with the concept of having special programs within the criminal justice system for women or in having biases towards women, perhaps in favor of women, in terms of how “guilty” or “deserving of punishment” a woman is likely to be in a particular situation.
Men and women do have different roles in society and they do have differing characteristics and different tendencies, and it is true that men are supposed to “provide for and protect” women, to show care and concern for women, and to be the one in control of situations, implying a greater level of responsibility for the man and a lesser level of responsibility for the woman.
In neither of the articles talking about women being given better treatment than men was there any assumption that women shouldn’t be punished at all or that women shouldn’t be held responsible for their criminal conduct. Lawlessness is not the goal of any biases that might be shown in favor of women.
I am not an advocate for “equality” between men and women, the fixation that men and women should always be treated the same is a feminist idea, not a patriarchal idea. I am wary of criticizing biases in the legal system that may favor women on the grounds that it is not “fair”. There are values in society other than fairness it is legitimate to uphold, such as protecting women and imposing responsibility upon men for their conduct, responsibility commensurate with the power it is assumed men are asserting.
Laura writes:
As I said, female convicts do face special circumstances as women, just as male convicts face special circumstances as men, but those are things sentencing judges should already consider. The underlying issue at stake here is apparently the care of the children of convicted single mothers. There is no need for special programs geared toward greater leniency for women, however, because lessening the sentences for women, aside from being inherently unfair, will likely draw more women into crime. There becomes a greater incentive for women to take certain risks in the drug trade because they have less at stake.
