TY  - SER
AU  - Jeffries, Samantha
TI  - Is differential treatment by gender warranted? [electronic resource]
PY  - 2001///]
KW  - FVC
KW  - CRIMINAL JUSTICE
KW  - GENDER DIFFERENCE
KW  - GENDER
KW  - JUSTICE
KW  - MEN
KW  - WOMEN
KW  - NEW ZEALAND
N1  - Original URL: http://www.crime.co.nz/c-files.aspx?ID=12366   Also published as: Jeffries, Samantha (2001) Gendered judgments: differentiation in criminal court outcomes. In Proceedings Women's Studies Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand. Retrieved 29 October 2010, from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/8617/1/8617.pdf
N2  - This article explore the differences between judicial outcomes for men and women, and whether the disparities in criminal court outcomes are just and warranted. The article draws on New Zealand and international research. Briefly summarising the situation in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, and more extensively in New Zealand, the author finds men are disproportionately suspected, apprehended, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned even when legal factors, such as the seriousness of criminal history, are held constant. Internationally, researchers have highlighted extra-legal factors such as familial ties, histories of victimisation and mental health as possible reasons for sex differences in judicial outcomes. The research shows that domesticity and dependence traits frequently mitigate punishment for women. Additionally, women and men tend to be constructed differently in the criminal courts in terms of victimisation and pathology, with women more often construed as not altogether responsible for their criminality. New Zealand has produced little systematic research on gender and criminal court sanctioning. However, as is the case internationally, research that has controlled for numerous legal factors still tends to find that women receive less severe judicial outcomes than men. In discussing whether less severe judicial outcomes are warranted,  the author suggest there is a need to transcend the equality/difference debate, which is little more than a male-centred debate and as such problematic because women are ultimately disadvantaged by this debate. The author discusses whether prison is a harsher punishment for women than it is for men in the context of exploring whether equity rather than equality should be sought through developing a social-based rather than a justice-based approach to criminal justice processing, and finds this problematic for a number of reasons. It is concluded that future discussion should aim to problematise criminal justice processing as it relates to both sexes, rather than simply in terms of women against men, noting that criminal men and women both tend to come from disadvantaged circumstances
UR  - http://www.crime.co.nz/c-files.aspx?ID=12366
ER  -