Patricia Pearson

Many feminists, and some criminologists, promote the notion that women are treated more harshly than men for crime : that not only is the violence they commit the fault of others’ abuse but that the system further abuses them through punishment. The evidence suggests the contrary : women are still receiving preferential treatment in the justice system. In 1987, twenty-two out of every one hundred persons for « serious crimes » in the United States were women. Yet only ten out of one hundred persons convicted for serious crimes were women, and five out of one hundred persons imprisoned for those crimes were women. In 1986, 48 percent of New York women convicted of homicide actually went in prison, whereas 77 percent of men did.