Abstract: Disparities between males and females in criminal behavior have been widely documented. Despite the extensive amount of research examining sex differences in criminal and analogous behaviors, there is no consensus on whether self-reported misbehavior accounts for the large sex differences found in all phases of the criminal justice system. The current study explores whether, and to what degree, self-reported misconduct accounts for male-female differences. To do so, data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) were analyzed. Consistent with prior research, the results revealed statistically significant and substantively large male-female differences in being arrested, pleading guilty, being sentenced to probation, and being incarcerated. These disparities were unaffected by self-reports of lifetime violent behavior, lifetime non-violent behavior, low self-control, IQ, parental socialization, and social support.
Keywords: Add health Criminal justice Female Male Sex differences
Discussion
A long line of research has revealed that males are disproportionately engaged in crime
and other acts of aggression and that they are processed through the criminal justice
system at much higher levels than females. Males are significantly more likely to be
arrested, incarcerated, and sentenced to lengthier prison terms than are females (Ellis
et al., 2009). The factors accounting for male-female differences, however, have been
somewhat elusive. The current study attempted to shed some light on the potential
factors that might explain male-female differences in being arrested, pleading guilty,
being sentenced to probation, and being incarcerated. Analysis of data drawn from the
Add Health revealed two key findings.
First, and in line with previous research (Ellis et al., 2009), the analyses revealed
robust male-female differences in the criminal justice processing variables. In comparison to the odds for females, the odds that males would be arrested was 3.74 times
greater, that they would plead guilty was 3.96 times greater, that they would be
sentenced to probation was 3.93 times greater, that they would be incarcerated was
3.91 times greater, and that they would be incarcerated if arrested was 1.45 times
greater. These differences were all statistically significant and quite large.
The second key finding to emerge from the analyses was that the male-female
disparities in criminal justice processing were largely immune to the effects of
covariates—including measures of some of the most consistent and robust predictors
of contact with the criminal justice system, such as involvement in violent and
nonviolent behavior, self-control, IQ, exposure to delinquent peers, and maternal as
well as paternal socialization variables. Although the male-female gap was slightly
attenuated in the multivariate models, the reductions were very small, ranging from 4 to
12%. This is a particularly noteworthy finding and highlights just how robust the male-
female differences were in the data.
While these analyses cannot provide definitive evidence of the processes that lead to
males being disproportionately processed through the criminal justice system, they do
tend to rule out some of the more common explanations. For instance, including
covariates for lifetime violent behavior and lifetime nonviolent behavior and having
the male-female gap remain strong and statistically significant tends to suggest that
male over-involvement in criminal activities is not the driving force behind why males
are disproportionately processed in the criminal justice system. At the same time,
criminogenic traits, such as low self-control and IQ, appear to have little to no
substantive impact on sex disparities in the criminal justice system and neither do
parental socialization measures or social support.
Our findings suggest that factors other than differential involvement create and
sustain sex disparities in justice system processing. Given findings in the extant
literature, it seems likely that legally relevant variables, such as the number of prior
arrests, the seriousness of the current crime, the presence of witnesses, and the desire of
victims to press charges, are the likely factors driving sex differences in processing.
Males, for example, account for the vast majority of homicides, rapes, and armed
robberies—crimes where system discretion is more limited and where penalties, such as
incarceration, are almost certain if convicted.
We would be remis not to contrast the literature on sex disparities in justice processing
with the literature on racial differences in processing. By any measure, sex disparities are
substantially larger and more indelible than are racial disparities. Indeed, in prior analyses
of these data, racial disparities in self-reported justice system processing were accounted
for using a limited number of measures (Beaver et al., 2013). And where several studies
find that legally relevant variables account for all, or almost all, of racial disparities in
processing, just the opposite is true of the literature on sex disparities in processing. Given
our findings, and those reported by others, it would appear that the criminal justice system
is sexist in its application of justice. However, we suggest that the system is rationally
sexist. Men are more physically violent than women, are physically more capable of
inflicting harm on others, and they engage in crimes where personal injury is more likely.
The criminal careers of men are also longer than women’s, they accelerate their offending
more quickly and have an earlier age of onset than women, and they take longer to desist
(Moffitt, 1993; Wright, Tibbetts, & Daigle, 2008). In turn, men represent a greater
comparative social threat to the safety of others and to the communities within which
they live. The large sex disparities found in the literature, and in our analysis of a national
sample, exist in part because they reflect the rational legal and institutional responses to
more fundamental differences between men and women in their use of physical
aggression. If true, women are more likely to be channeled out of the criminal justice
system for reasons not entirely associated with their participation in a criminal event. In
general, women are less physically dangerous than men and pose less a social threat than
men even if they engage in the same criminal event with a male.
The findings revealing significant male-female differences in criminal justice processing
should be viewed cautiously owing to a number of limitations. First, all of the criminal
justice processing variables were based on retrospective self-reported data which leaves
open the possibility of recall bias. It would be interesting and important to replicate these
analyses with data that included official crime measures. Unfortunately, the Add Health
data do not include such measures and so other samples will have to be employed in order
to address this shortcoming. Second, the data were based on a nationally representative data
which translates into relatively few chronic offenders. Again, an important avenue for
future research would be to analyze samples that have a substantially greater number of
violent offenders to determine whether these findings would remain robust to such
differences in the composition of the sample. Last, the Add Health data that are currently
available only followed respondents into their 30s. This necessarily leaves open the
possibility that the findings might change if the age range of respondents reached later
into adulthood. Future research would benefit by addressing these limitations and determining whether the findings presented here would be replicated in other samples.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment