Gender biased sentencing...

[mazdavirgin]

Just curious as to why as a society we always give women a slap on the wrist...

A couple articles frankly seem to really exhibit this:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Wo...500/story.html
http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/searc...263/story.html
etc...

Frustrating frankly since I don't see how being a woman somehow makes you less guilty. How would the sentencing have differed if the genders were reversed?

[G-ZUS]

Wheres the equal rights they are always asking for

[FraserB]

.

[msommers]

I think it would only be fair to compare this sort of thing using percentages.

Slap on the wrist sentence / crimes committed by men

Slap on the wrist sentence / crimes committed by women

Are less women committing crimes and therefore cases like these stand out?

Just saying that now reminds me of how bias insurance used to be (hell it still might be). More guys drove, there were more accidents, therefore guys are not as good of drivers and need to pay more. Look at the percentages!

[polarice]

Just curious if you have the research to prove that women only get a slap on the wrist... Something other than media articles.

Finding good research on sentencing practices for women is difficult because most of it is male centered, however I haven't seen anything that would support the claim that women always get a slap on the wrist.

[HiTempguy1]

Originally posted by FraserB
I think that in the second case there are circumstances that played a role there.

The junkie should be in jail for murder, but a suspended sentence might have been warranted in the second case. Its just too bad Canada does not have a felony murder allowance like the US, kill someone while committing a crime and its first degree.

Nooooo! We'll fill up the prisons with more people who are meant to be there! That will cost us money!

[whiskas]

Originally posted by G-ZUS
Wheres the equal rights they are always asking for

in the kitchen.

[kenny]

Originally posted by G-ZUS
Wheres the equal rights they are always asking for

They have them, they just don't want equal responsibility.

[mazdavirgin]

It's hard to find number for Canada but here are some statistics for fun:

How did the hospital choose the people to watch? Every case involved previous children who had died in mysterious circumstances. To be more precise, 37 killer moms murdered 40 children. Total jail sentences imposed: 0, even though some of the women confessed when confronted afterwards.

About 1300 child murders took place in the US last year. About 500 perpetrators were non-parents, roughly divided between men and women. Of the rest, only 30 (!) were fathers. In other words, mothers were more than 25 times more likely to kill their progeny than fathers. Yet somehow, men are viewed as being more dangerous to their children than women.

In Canada, many crime statistics are presented in such a way as to hide female malevolence. As an example, we do not break down statistics on child murder by sex of the offender. Consequently, this information is not available here. However, there is no reason to assume that things are any different north of the border.

This favoured treatment of women is not limited to child murder. Rose Cece and Mary Taylor, a lesbian couple in Toronto, decided on a lark to kill a police officer. Had a man done so, he would have been convicted with first-degree murder almost without regard to the facts. If not, police associations across the country would have been outraged. In fact, Cece and Taylor were convicted of manslaughter and no one commented.

At least they went to jail. Women are often let off with suspended sentences. As the Ottawa Citizen said in one case, « husband-killer Lilian Getkate's sentence of two years less a day at home is an insult to our sense of natural justice. » The murderer herself reacted by saying: « I was startled. I took someone's life and I'm not going to jail. Of course I'm surprised by that. » Once again, the Crown did not appeal.

http://quebecoislibre.org/010203-9.htm

Here is some more relevant information

Women who are sent to jail typically receive shorter sentences than their male counterparts. In 2003, for example, the mean term for women sent to prison was 63 days, nearly half the figure for men whose mean prison term was 120 days. The fact that women receive shorter sentences than men is consistent across all offences, with the exception of attempted murder, criminal harassment, and drug trafficking.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-.../chap7-eng.htm

The Effert verdict has been called an extreme departure in how the courts treat women who take the lives of their newborns, a crime known as neonaticide, the killing of a child within 24 hours of birth. Compassion, rather than extended jail time, is the norm for a neonaticidal mother, or for a mother who commits infanticide, defined in Canadian law as the killing of a child less than one year of age.

"Effert's second-degree murder conviction is completely out of step with jurisprudence in other provinces," University of Winnipeg criminologist Kirsten Kramar, a Canadian expert on infanticide, has said. "It wasn't a just outcome."

Effert's life sentence with no parole for 10 years -- the mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree murder -- is unprecedented for a case of infant homicide, in modern times at least. No Canadian woman has gone to jail for longer than a year for this crime since a legal provision for infanticide was enacted in 1948. Instead, convicted mothers usually get no jail time at all, Kramar says.

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjourna...d-e9cf2f1ddd62

Ill try to find more stats but frankly since they don't seem to want to collect them it's a little hard...

[polarice]

I don't really like using just statistics to represent crime because there is nothing behind. Just a number, unless of course you're controlling for everything but even then its easy to manipulate.

Like the sentencing time, for similar crimes, for similar offenders i.e how many of them were first time offenders, and the specific type of crime not just that it was a summary offense. It can help analyze what seems to be a such a sentencing disparity.

I don't doubt that men and women are framed differently, but I find the issue of infanticide a more appropriate charge than 2nd degree murder. I don't think that a man's experience of pregnancy and depression the exact same as his partner, which is why it should be reflected in sentencing.

I can see why Kramer would view the Effert case as unjust, as I am familiar with some of her work. Its interesting to note that she puts a lot of "blame" on the discourse change on the media, specifically the Toronto Star in the late 90s or early 2000s and the subsequent legislation changes to get tough.

Summary of Kramer
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/su.../kramar805.htm

[PsychNerd]

I agree with polarice -- we need to look at better research concerning this matter before we can make that conclusion. A lot of the things that mazdavirgin quoted have to do with infanticide which can be correlated with postpartum depression (therefore influencing the sentencing).

Crimes that women commit are often less serious compared to those that men commit. We need to compare data between men and women with similar crimes as well as the circumstances surrounding those crimes.