There are two competing perspectives that have shown explanatory success in predicting variation in criminal justice leniency for women. In short, this theory predicts that women who are married will receive more leniency. Daly's theory of 'familial paternalism' suggests that the court sees the female defendant with children as more responsible and anchored and a corollary realizes the impracticality of imprisoning a person on which children depend. This theory predicts that women with children, independent of marital status, will be more likely to receive lenient treatment from the court. As mentioned, both perspectives have been tested empirically with respect to sentencing.
Results indicate that there are racial differences.
We hope to extend these findings in this study. We do this by looking at a sample where the final outcome is the same for Black and White offenders, but where preincarceration treatment may have been different. We expect to find that both 'informal social control' and 'familial paternalism' will be helpful in explaining any variation in leniency between Black and White women in our sample, but, consistent with earlier research findings, that these factors will operate differently. Data, Methods, and Results Data for this study comes from the Bureau of Justice's Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities in 1986. As indicated, we look only at women in the sample for this study.