Women

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Women Punishment The Courts Imprisonment

• MA Criminal Justice
• Anne Kennedy

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Outline

• Context Nature of Female Offenders
• Theories of Crime how they apply to Female
  Offending
• Punishing Female Offenders
• Women The CJS
• Women in Prison
• Concluding Points

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Context Nature of Female Offending

• Characteristics of Female Offenders
• Do men and women commit the same kinds of crime?
• Do men and women offend for the same or different
  reasons?

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Theories of Crime

• Traditional Theory Womens experiences ignored,
  discounted, distorted.
• Biological Determinism Influence and Effect
• Feminist Critique
• Feminist Jurisprudence
• Woman-Wise Penology

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Punishing Female Offenders

• Femininity anti-thesis of criminality (Smart,
  1976)
• Greater Leniency? (Mannheim, 1940)
• Double Jeopardy (Hudson, 1996)
• Doubly deviant (Worrall, 2002)
• Harsher Punishment? Myth of new female
  criminal? Like for like? (Hale, 2005)

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Differential Treatment

• Six Reasons
• Women are victims and offenders
• Offending behaviour is different
• Female prisoners have different needs
• Remand experience is different
• Prison experience is different
• Disproportionate effect on other people
• (Hale, 2005)

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Women and CJS

• Response of CJS to crime through a gendered
  lens (Walklate, 2001)
• Differential application of the law policing
  treatment representation of women within the CJS
• Young girls referred to juvenile courts receive
  more punitive treatment (Kennedy, 1993)
• SIR (Laing, 1984 Edwards, 1985 Heidensohn,
  1996) PSR (Deakin,2005).

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Women CJS

• Conceptualisation of normal family life
• By judging both male female defendants in the
  context of their families, the court displays not
  only impartiality or equality of treatment, but
  its role of preserving difference based on sexual
  inequality (Eaton, 1986143 in Walklate,
  2001155).

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Women in Prison

• 4,510.28 on 30 November 2007
• Last decade WIP more than doubled
• Over third no previous convictions
• Most of rise result of increase in severity of
  sentences.
• 105 increase in number of women remanded into
  custody 1995-2005
• 60 held outside region (PRT, 2007)

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Women in Prison

• Serve shorter sentences
• Majority held for non-violent offences Drugs -
  Theft Handling Stolen Goods
• 64.3 released 2004 reconvicted in 2yrs
• 988 foreign national women in prison end of
  September 2007 (PRT, 2007)

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Women in Prison

• At least third of mothers are lone parents before
  imprisonment
• 66 have dependent children under 18 34 under
  5s
• Each year, approx 17,700 children separated
• 5 of children remain in their own home
• 84 places in mother baby units in prison
• In 2004, 114 women gave birth in prison
• Currently 39 children in mother baby units
  (PRT, 2007)

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WIP Mental Health

• 70 suffer two or more mental health disorders -
  63 neurotic disorder -14 psychotic disorder
• 1 January-March 2007 were 2,839 female self-harm
  incidents
• 23,420 self harm incidents in 2006
• Women accounted for 11,503 of total incidents
  form only 6 of prison population
• July 2007 - 6 suicides (PRT, 2007)

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The Criminal Justice Act 2003 Implications for
Women

• Extends the sentencing powers of magistrates
• Provides sentencers with a wider selection of
  custodial sentences
• Requires previous offences to be taken into
  account in deciding seriousness of present
  offence
• Many female offenders are repeat shop lifters,
  low level fraudsters
• Might disproportionately increase the seriousness
  of their offence
• Introduces 3 types of short-term custodial
  sentence (see Player, 2005).

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Corston Review, 2007

• The government should announce within six months
  a clear strategy to replace existing womens
  prisons with suitable, geographically dispersed,
  small multi-functional custodial centres within
  10 years.
• Community solutions for non-violent offenders
  should be the norm.
• prison is not the right place for women
  offenders who pose no risk to the public.

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Alternatives

• ICM Poll 73 thought mothers of young children
  should not be in prison for non-violent crime
• 86 supported development of local centres for
  women to address the causes of their offending
  (SmartJustice, 2007)

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Conclusions

• Sensitive remand sentencing policies in the
  court
• Suitable disposables institutions available to
  them
• Better strategies to prevent offending more
  immediately re-offending
• WORP, 2004-2005

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Conclusions

• National network of local womens supervision,
  rehabilitation support units linked to local
  custodial units (Wedderburn Fawcett)
• More community treatment facilities for women
  with mental health substance abuse problems
• More community sentences with womens needs in
  mind (Fawcett Commission)

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Final thought!

• Before you
• Judge me try
• hard to love
• me, look within
• your heart,
• then ask
• have you seen
• my childhood?