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Crimes by Women - A Matter for the Police or for the Psychiatrist?

NCJ Number
81953
Journal
Tijdschrift voor criminologie Volume: 21 Issue: 5 Dated: (September/October 1979) Pages: 232-242
Author(s)
Y M Quispel
Date Published
1979
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The study discusses the reasons why both theoreticians and criminal justice professionals view criminal behavior by women as an indication of psychological aberration rather than a criminal offense.
Abstract
A 1977 Dutch study of sex stereotypes by psychotherapists and a similar 1970 American study both find that male psychotherapists differentiate characteristics of the healthy male individual from those of the healthy female, while female psychotherapists do not. According to the male psychotherapists, women are more emotional, tender, sensitive, personal, spontaneous, submissive, and less adventurous, independent, aggressive, competitive, objective, logical, responsible, and productive than men. These views reflect a double standard in society that influences the response of the criminal justice system to female offenders. Thus, the presence of aggressivity in a female is likely to be viewed as a pathological state requiring psychiatric treatment. Psychiatric examinations are ordered by courts more frequently for young female offenders than for males. In the Netherlands, the incomprehensibility of the offense is grounds for forensic observation; the fact that a woman committed an offense at all may thus be considered grounds for observation. Likewise, convicted women in the Netherlands are more likely to be placed in psychiatric treatment institutions from prisons than men. In England and the United States a number of prisons for women have been transformed into mental hospitals. Mental illness is thus viewed as a female alternative or equivalent to male antisocial behavior. In keeping with this, men predominate in prisons and women in psychiatric institutions. One might conclude that men and women react differently to problems because of the differences in their socialization: while men are likely to become aggressive, women are more likely to become withdrawn and depressed. However, the application of a double standard by the criminal justice system tends to cement the traditional image of women, to weaken the position of women, particularly those placed in mental institutions with no legal recourse, and to interfere with meaningful modification of deviant behavior. Notes are supplied.