6. The Role of Gender in the Criminal Justice System

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we think about the role played by gender in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, focusing in particular on: (i) the idea that everyone that goes through the criminal justice system should be treated the same, regardless of their age, sex, ethnicity, gender, etc.; (ii) the work of Loraine Gelsthorpe, Frances Heidensohn, the concept of 'double deviance' and the stigmatisation of female offenders; (iii) the work of Ruth Chigwada-Bailey on the additional prejudices faced by black females in the criminal justice system; (iv) the concept of substantive equality, and the idea that the criminal justice system should take offenders' economic and social circumstances into account; (v) the treatment of pregnant women within the criminal justice system, and the treatment of women more generally; (vi) the arguments for and against gender-specific treatment within the criminal justice system; (vii) the extent to which a criminal justice system that takes gender-specific circumstances into account might also benefit men and boys as well as women and girls; and (vii) some concluding thoughts for the course as a whole: the avenues opened up by feminist criminology, the shortcomings of criminological theories that do not take women's experiences into account, the importance of social issues such as the question of masculinity, etc.

Course

In this course, Dr Karen Evans (University of Liverpool) explores several topics related to gender and crime. In the first lecture, we think about the differences between men and women as perpetrators of crime. To what extent, in other words, is there a difference between the kinds of crimes committed by men and the kinds of crimes committed by women? In the second lecture, we think about the differences between men and women as victims of crime. In the third lecture, we explore some theories of female offending. Next, we look at the topic of feminist criminology. In the fifth lecture, we consider how some of the more recent, feminist theories of criminology have enhanced our understanding of male criminality. In the sixth and final lecture, we think about the role played by gender in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, and consider whether the criminal justice system would be better served by pursuing substantive rather than formal equality.

Lecturer

Dr Karen Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool. Her work has focused, although not exclusively, on communities in excluded neighbourhoods and their responses to marginalisation and deprivation. From the early 1990s this focus on the urban experience took Karen into research which was more criminological in nature as the fear of crime and victimisation increased in many neighbourhoods.