Gender and Criminal Court Outcomes: An Historical Analysis

• NCJ Number: 139871
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 30 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1992) Pages: 293-325
• Author(s): H Boritch
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 33 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Earlier version of paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, 1991, San Francisco

Annotation

Past research on gender differences in criminal sanctions generally indicates a pattern of more lenient outcomes for female offenders; in contrast, the current study of male and female offenders committed to the Middlesex County Jail in Ontario, Canada, between 1871 and 1920 finds more severe dispositions for female offenders.

Abstract

Study data were reconstructed from the original, handwritten records of the Middlesex County Jail. Information on a sample of male and female offenders was compiled by coding all pertinent data for every committal in each of 6 census years (1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and 1920). The final sample included 2,280 dispositions, of which 14 percent involved females. Subjects had been committed for common assault, larceny, drunkenness, vagrancy, or prostitution. Considerable complexity was observed in the nature and extent of gender-related differences in court outcomes. Women were more likely than men to receive prison dispositions and to incur longer sentences. At the same time, gender-related differences in sanction severity varied substantially. Among males, prison terms and long sentences were reserved for larceny; public order offenses were treated more leniently. Most instances of common assault consisted of relatively minor disputes between family members and friends, and judges did not regard these offenses as particularly serious expressions of male criminality. In contrast, the nature of the offense was a less important determinant of case outcome and sentence length among female offenders. Judges appeared to adopt the attitude that the form a woman's criminality took was secondary to the fact that a woman appeared before the court on any charge. Women received longer sentences for vagrancy, drunkenness, and assault. No differences were observed between men and women in case outcome for prostitution offenses. Men and women charged with larceny were treated similarly, but women with more than one arrest charge or a prior record were more likely than men to receive a prison sentence. Study findings highlight the need for research to be sensitive to the historically specific nature of relations among gender roles, formal and informal control mechanisms, and criminal sanctions. 69 references, 3 tables, and 1 figure