Women on Trial: A Study of the Female Suspect, Defendant, and Offender in the Criminal Law and Criminal Justice System.

Davis, Nanette J.; Edwards, Susan; Lipetz, Marcia J.; Tong, Rosemary

doi:10.2307/2070915

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Jones (2011), in his research on imprisoned women, found that the main pressures for pleading guilty when innocent were different for men and women, and often included childcare considerations and/or coercion. Jones's findings are consistent with much earlier research in the field by Dell (1971) and Edwards (1984) who found that women pled guilty for a number of reasons including: they thought there was no point in contesting the case, they wanted to avoid remand in custody, they hoped for a lesser sentence and, crucially, they wanted to get the matter 'out of the way'. Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson (2003), in their much-cited research, found that complicity with the system was highly correlated with feelings of low self-esteem and that this trait was more prevalent in women.…”

Section: The Digital Dispersal Of Discipline: Gender and The Carceral...supporting

confidence: 82%

“…The idea that technology is a neutral platform that can be asserted to solve 'judicial' problems ignores important lessons from feminist scholarship. Research has long-exposed how women are more likely than men to self-criminalise (Lacey, 2009) and plead guilty to crimes they did not commit (Jones, 2011) to get things 'out of the way' (Dell, 1971;Edwards, 1984). Increased interaction with the justice system via digital channels is likely to facilitate such behaviours.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendering the carceral web: Public sector reform, technology and digital (in)justice

Birkett

2023

Theoretical Criminology

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The UK government's Transforming Our Justice System agenda represents an emerging system of penal governance. Its cumulative impact, manifested through the mainstreaming of virtual hearings, a system of automatic online convictions and the Single Justice Procedure is a story yet to tell, with the potential impact on marginalised women simply a footnote. Such women, well-documented victims of the legal aid cuts as well as the digital divide, must comply with and negotiate the requirements of the carceral web alone. Pursuance of the reforms, representing the next instalment in the neo-liberal justice agenda, exposes another example of life at the penal–welfare nexus. This precarious territory has burgeoned since government-imposed austerity, with implications for self-criminalisation, net-widening and social justice. Reforms couched in the language of ‘efficiency’ and ‘common sense’ are likely to run in direct opposition to what marginalised women might need (or respond well to) and may jeopardise official reductionist strategies.

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Section: The Digital Dispersal Of Discipline: Gender and The Carceral...supporting

confidence: 82%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendering the carceral web: Public sector reform, technology and digital (in)justice

Birkett

2023

Theoretical Criminology

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“…Evidence for the "bad mothers" narrative was also present, but was interestingly most apparent in the paternal perpetrator condition, where Sarah was seen as callous, neglecting her supposed motherly duties for the sake of her career. Thus, even when Mark committed the act, some blame was directed at Sarah for deviating from cultural scripts and expectations that emphasize soft femininity and nurturing motherhood (Easteal et al, 2015;Edwards, 1984). Interestingly, there did not appear to be any meaningful quantitative relationship between gender role beliefs and judgments of Sarah or Mark.…”

Section: Interpretation Of Findingsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Much of the research that has explored media portrayals of mothers who have killed their children has taken place outside of the UK. Such work has emphasized the contrast between the violent acts and the societal expectations of femininity and motherhood, aligning with the good/bad woman dichotomy that is present in broader social discourses (Ballinger, 2007;Easteal et al, 2015;Edwards, 1984). Others have expanded upon this, finding that females who kill are presented as either "bad, mad, or sad" (e.g., Cavaglion, 2008;Easteal et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Gendered Nature Of Infant Homicide Media Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

Bad Parents? Evaluating Judgments of Infant Homicides

Sparks¹,

Vione²,

Fido³

2022

Preprint

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The murdering of one’s own infant may be one of the most harrowing crimes imaginable. Despite this and decades of debate over gendered infanticide laws, there exists little empirical work exploring attitudes toward individuals who have committed infant homicide. Such work has focused primarily on depictions of mothers, yet UK government data indicates that the majority of infant homicide cases involve paternal suspects. The present study used a mixed-methods design to explore attitudes toward mothers and fathers who have been accused of murdering their infant child. Vignettes were used to capture whether parental mental health issues impacted judgments. Participants (n = 245) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, depicting a mother or father who admitted to murdering their infant child. Results indicated that maternal suspects are evaluated more leniently, in line with the chivalry hypothesis. Qualitative analyses uncovered hidden gender expectations: mothers were ascribed blame when the father was accused of infant homicide, a finding that was not present in the reverse scenario. These results suggest that traditional views of motherhood are at odds with a shifting social landscape that is seeing an increase in stay-at-home fathers wherein mothers are still held responsible for the father’s actions.

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“…Our analysis does not seek to explain why women offend, nor are we contributing to the ever-burgeoning literature about 'criminal women' or 'women's pathways into crime'. Instead, our analysis here demands that we revisit a longstanding but arguably under-conceptualised aspect of women's punishment, that of gendered processes of criminalisation (Carlen 1983;Edwards 1984;Chadwick and Little 1987). Lacey (2018) provides a helpful operational definition, importantly distinguishing between 'formal criminalisation' as reflected by policy responses and legislative changes that impact on the potential to criminalise and 'substantive criminalisation', which manifests in the decisions, patterns and impact of the application and enforcement of any formal law or policy.…”

Section: Je As a Lens: Examining Women's Criminalisation And Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Criminalisation of Women in Joint Enterprise Cases: Exposing the Limits to ‘Serving’ Girls and Women Justice

Clarke

Chadwick

2023

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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This paper reports original evidence about the experiences of 109 girls and women criminalised in England and Wales under the controversial legal doctrine of joint enterprise (JE). Over three-quarters of the women were convicted of murder or manslaughter. Yet, in no cases was evidence presented that the girl or woman used a deadly weapon. In 90% of the cases, the defendants engaged in no violence at all, and in nearly half of the cases, they were not present at the scene of the violent incident. In seeking to make sense of these findings, JE becomes a lens through which we can conceptualise gendered processes of criminalisation. Decisions to charge women that reflect strategic approaches to policing and prosecuting some forms of violence and harm, alongside prosecution and defence strategies used in the courtroom that reproduce patriarchy, class stigma and racism, will be explored. Simultaneously, the criminalising processes actively obscure and silence the wider context and personal histories of the lives of girls and women, which once surfaced, expose wider tensions in addressing all harms to deliver justice for women.

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Women on Trial: A Study of the Female Suspect, Defendant, and Offender in the Criminal Law and Criminal Justice System.

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Gendering the carceral web: Public sector reform, technology and digital (in)justice

Gendering the carceral web: Public sector reform, technology and digital (in)justice

Bad Parents? Evaluating Judgments of Infant Homicides

The Criminalisation of Women in Joint Enterprise Cases: Exposing the Limits to ‘Serving’ Girls and Women Justice

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