In the 1970s rape was widely seen as a sexual act of uncontrollable lust, not an act of violence. Critical to the concept of rape was the concept of women's "chastity." In traditional rape ideology, an "unchaste" (sexually experienced) woman lacked credibility and/or must have "wanted it" or consented. Only white women could be "chaste"; the law presumed that Black and probably other women of color were "unchaste." The historical treatment of rape charges often stemmed from men's extreme distrust of women when the alleged perpetrator was white (Wriggins).
Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess the value of the ‘chivalry thesis’ in understanding gender differences in crime. When looking at official statistics it is clear to see that there is a difference in the amount and type of crime that is committed by the two sexes. The chivalry thesis is the idea that the cause for this difference is the experience of women within the criminal justice system (CJS). The thesis argues that women are treated more leniently by criminal justice agents such as the police , magistrates and judges because men are socialised to behave in a ‘chivalrous’ way towards women. There are several differences in the amount of crime that men and women do.
The main idea of the chivalry thesis is this prospect that men are socialised to act in a way more chivalrous – or gentlemanly – toward women so they end up convicting men more than women. Otto Pollak (1950) argued that women’s crimes are less likely to end up in official statistics due to the fact that “men don’t like to accuse or punish women” so the criminal justice system is more lenient toward them. The chivalry thesis can be supported by the work of Graham and Bowling who used self-report studies and found that men still commit more crimes than women although the gap is now smaller. They also found that women are more likely to be cautioned whereas men are more likely to be arrested. Nevertheless, the chivalry thesis also has many criticisms including results from a study carried out in a
People believe that those who create this form of sexual entertainment are only feeding the violent urges of those individuals and making it more acceptable. Altman would argue that the pornography was doing the exact opposite. Those who watch violent pornography can be fulfilling those urges which in turn would make them less likely to act out those depictions in society. If violent pornography is seen as a danger to society and the wellbeing of others, then who is say that violent movies are not? Andrew Altman would argue that if there
They argue that women have a more natural desire to be caring and this does not correspond to the values of crime, so they are less likely to offend due to them not having the nature to commit the crime. They suggest that normal women are less likely to commit crimes compared to normal men, this rules out any mental illness that could affect the person to commit the crime. Normal women are said to care about their families and lives to not go out and commit crime where as men don’t have that caring nature like women do. However a woman writer named Dalton suggested that hormonal factors can influence the small amount of women that commit crime in certain circumstances, these could be for different reasons. So there is less women committing crimes than men showing a gender difference in crime.
In this essay I will explore the fundamental reasons why there is a significant difference between crime rates concerning men and women and I will also give reasons why men seem to commit more crimes on the surface and why women seem to commit less crime. I will base my Sociological concepts on Heidensohn but I will also use ideas from Pollack, Adler, Smart etc. The official crime statistics show how recorded crime tends to be a predominantly ‘masculine activity’. One explanation as to why there was a significant difference in patterns of crime concerning gender could be because Sociologists tended to focus on male criminality. Heidensohn (1985) said that female crime was either overlooked or ignored by sociologists or sociologists would merely assume stereotypical ideas on females regarding their criminal activity, for example, they would be too busy cooking and cleaning to have time to take part in crime, whereas men are stereotypically the bread-winners which means they are out in public more and so would have more opportunity to commit crime than women.
(Douglas, Burgess, 1986) Criminal profiling started way back in the 1960’s and became more popular as the years went by. Homicide rates were extremely high back then and tended to increase at numerous rates. Criminal profiling presented a way to understand who is capable of what crime. What do the surveys prove? To answer this question, many people think that criminal profiling is solely based on race, age, and gender but it becomes much more than that.
Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations for differences in the patterns of offending between males and females. As Item A states, men commit a considerable amount of crime as opposed to women according to official statistics. Moreover men tend to commit different types of crime than women offenders eg It is more common for men to be convicted of violent and sexual crimes than women, who tend to commit crimes such as shoplifting and prostitution. In addition to there have been many sociological explanations put forward when looking at the differences in patterns of offending between males and females. Women are often seen as the victims of crimes rather than the perpetrator, official crime statistics
12 2 gender and crime Frances Heidensohn and Marisa Silvestri introduction Men commit crime at higher rates than women, are involved in more serious and violent ofending, and are more prone to recidivism. While this statement has been called ‘one of the few undisputed “facts” of criminology’ (Lauritsen et al. 2009: 362) it was an unconsidered one for much of the subject’s history. hat it is now a central and much debated matter is due largely to the advent of feminist criminology which took this ‘gender gap’ in recorded crime as one of its key themes. Gender is now an established and central topic in criminology and studies of criminal justice (Heidensohn, forthcoming).
Are official statistics a reliable source of information about crime in Britain? Official criminal statistics are defined as “Statistical data compiled by the police and the courts and routinely published by governments as indices of the extent of crime” (Munchie, 2001, p194). “The working class, the young males, and members of some ethnic minorities are all more likely to commit crimes than the middle class, the elderly, females and whites – according to official statistics”. (Haralambos and Holborn, 2004, p338). In assessing the question “Are official statistics a reliable source of information about crime in Britain?” several factors will be considered: including how the statistics are collected, the divide between males and females in crime statistics, the over representation of ethnic minorities and any problems in looking at the true extent of crime using statistics as an indicator for this.