NCJ Number
151245
Date Published
1994
Length
349 pages
Annotation
The book examines the question of whether men and women prosecuted for similar crimes are punished differently and, if women are sentenced more leniently, whether this tendency varies by class and race.
Abstract
The author analyzes women's and men's cases that are routinely processed in felony courts, cases of homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, larceny, and drug offenses. She presents a statistical analysis of sentencing disparity for a wide sample of cases and compares 40 matched pairs of women and men accused and convicted of statutorily similar offenses. In each case, she examines the presentence investigation reports and transcripts of the remarks made in court on the day of sentencing, constructing a portrait of each defendant and a narrative for each crime. She identifies the theories of punishment judges used to justify sentences imposed, analyzes whether men and women are pulled into crime in different ways, whether their offenses are comparably serious, and whether court officials use different conceptions of justice in sentencing men and women. She uses both numerical and narrative descriptions of crime and punishment to demonstrate the inadequacies of quantitative analysis. Although her statistics suggest that women are favored, her close comparison of the matched pairs indicates that gender differences are negligible when the details of the cases are taken into consideration. Appendixes, references, index