From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: violence
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 12:19:58 GMT
Followup-To: alt.feminism

Jean M. Petrosino writes:
> 
> asgard@plx.com (J.R. Stoner) responded to my post about violence with:
> 	Men commit very little crime, in general.  And don't you forget it.
> 
> Okay, then why do we have a crime problem?  Why are the majority of jails 
>  filled with men?

> He continues:
> 	Has it occurred to you that the difference of result might be
> 	because guilty women are _convicted_ less often than guilty
> 	men?  The convicted women are imprisoned less than men?
> 
> Wrong.  How can the judicial system be biased toward women when a judge can 
>  rule that a five year old girl who was raped was 'acting sexual' and let her
>  rapist go free.  

If one looks at the firsthand reports of victims of the 'perceived sex of
offender' - using, for example the National Crime Survey - one will find
that about 1/6 of all the single-offender violent crimes surveyed were
committed by women.

Crime           # single-offender     Male   Female  Unknown and unavaliable
                 victimizations

Rape                  115,820            95.0     1.7      3.3
Simple Assault      2,403,840            83.9    15.7       .4
Aggravated Assault  1,238,200            87.2    12.1       .6
Robbery               568,510            87.0    11.1      1.9

All crimes violence 4,326,370            85.6    13.7       .7


Homicide fits in a similar range         85.8    13.5       .6

(1989 Uniform Crime Reports - single offender single-victim homicides)

However, one typically finds that the ratio of men to women in prison
is much higher than this.  (On the order of 95% men, 5% women).  This seems
to suggest that the existing bias in the police + legal system is to treat
men more harshly than women.

For some idea of how much the judicial system in particular is responsible
for this, I will quote the following article that details the experiences
in Colorado, where apparently laws were passed to make sentencing more
objective and less open to interpretation by the judges (and hence cultural
bias and gender bias in particular).
 
I should note that I don't necessarily agree with all of the viewpoints
expressed in this article - more later.

---
	_The_Denver_Post_				April 25, 1992

			  Women in Colo. jails up 560%

By Alan Gottlieb
Denver Post Staff Writer

  Colorado women are committing the same number and types of crimes they
always did, but they're paying the price like never before.

  The number of women serving time in Colorado prisons has jumped 560
percent since 1973, according to a new study by Citizens for Correctional
Reform, a local prison-reform advocacy group.  During that same period,
the number of male prisoners increased 264 percent.

  Judges have less sentencing latitude than the used to in dealing with
offenders.  But the effects ripple through the community when women are
put behind bars because so many women are mothers, the reform group said.

  The study, presented yesterday to the Colorado Criminal Justice
Commission, says women are being imprisoned for non-violent crimes when
lesser punishment would do.  Members of the citizens group urged several
reforms, including a change in sentencing laws to allow low-risk offenders
to say out of prison.

  Seventy-seven percent of the women in state prisons as of last March 31
[1992] were serving time for low-grade felonies such as fraud by check and
small-scale drug sales, said Carol Lease of the Empowerment Program, a
service program for women in jail and on parole and probation.

  Also, 90 percent of women in Colorado's prisons have no prior adult
convictions for violent crimes and 92 percent didn't use a weapon in their
offense, the study says.

  New guidelines enacted in 1985 stripped judges of most of the sentencing
latitude, Lease said.  Judges used to be more lenient with women than with
men, she said, but that's not the case anymore.

  Yet the effect on society of having many women in prison is immeasurable
because more than 80 percent of Colorado's female inmates have children.

  In some cases, relatives care for the children.  But in others, "the
children end up with social services or in foster homes," said Linda
Lodenkamper of the reform organization.  "So when you talk about the
impact on women, you're also talking about the greater impact on society."

  Advocates offered several suggestions to keep women out of state
prisons.  They included using part of Lowry Air Force Base for a pilot
program to house 30 to 50 female inmates and their children in existing
dormitories.  The women would be released to work during the day, while
their children attended Head Start programs on the site.

  Despite the rapid rise in the number of female prisoners, women still
comprise just 8 percent of the 7,000-plus Colorado inmate population, the
study says.  The state legislature recently put construction of a new
women's prison on hold, because the number of female inmates isn't
increasing fast enough to justify the expense in tight budgetary times,
said Christie Rosten, a researcher for the corrections department.

---

In particular, the data I pointed out earlier suggests that if women are not
yet making up 1/6 of the prisoners for violent crimes in Colorado, it is
because of reasons other than the fact that they are not committing them.  I
suspect that bias on the part of police and prosecutors play a part, but
don't have much data as to the specific cause of the discrepancy.

Also, though I agree that the problem of what happens to children when
their parents are imprisioned is a real one, I dislike the emphasis of the
article on 'motherhood'.

> How can the judicial system be biased toward women when the man who Amy Fisher
>  allegedly had an affair with was conveniently absent from all court 
>  proceeding and vehemently denies having an affair with her. 

Statistics such as those I quoted earlier have convinced me that the
judicial system is biased against men, ancedotal evidence to the contrary.

Our country *does* have a real problem with violent crime as compared to
other countries.  Interpol data shows that we are one of the leaders in
the world wrt. high homicide rates.  Looking at a 1984 Interpol crime survey,
the  US led the list at 7.9 actual homicides per 100,000 population - higher
than such nations as Chile (5.8 homicides per 100,000) and Northern Ireland
(4.0). [The US is one of the few countries to report actual homicides and
not include attempted homicides, BTW - the Interpol data reports both
figures, when they are available.  Unfortunately I have only a subset of
the complete data - this was from a secondary source rather than the Interpol
data itself - so I don't have the exact rank of the US with respect to crime.
But it is quite high - in spite of the fact that we also have a very high
rate of people in prison per capita.]

However, focusing on men as criminals is nothing more than sexism and is IMO
also not going to solve the problem - US women appear to be more violent than
the men in many other countries.
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