Are men natural born criminals? The prison numbers dont lie Our jails are overflowing with men, while women account for less than five per cent of the prisoner population. Jessica Abrahams explores whats behind the gender crime gap. ...I wont bother deconstructing the arguments that follow, as Karen Straughan (aka GirlWritesWhat) has kindly obliged with a rebuttal in the comments section, and it cant really be bettered... Karen Straughan : Prisons are also disproportionately filled with people of color. So should we start trying to reform hyper-blackulinity? Because jeez, just the word hyper-blackulinity seems kinda racist to me. Perhaps we could start off by not being a bunch of bigots, and actually look at the evidence. Fatherlessness is a better predictor of criminal activity, gang activity and future incarceration than race, socioeconomic status or education level. So maybe we should start facilitating the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children, especially post-divorce, unlike what we do now (which is effectively allow mothers to cut fathers from their childrens lives if and when they wish). Perhaps we should also examine whether the male/female ratio in incarceration might be an indicator of OTHER sociological phenomenon than men are more likely to commit crime. When comparing men and women committing identical crimes under identical circumstances: * women are less likely to be stopped * when stopped, women are less likely to be arrested * when arrested, women are less likely to be charged * when charged, women are more likely to be charged with a lesser offence * when charged, women are less likely to be prosecuted * when prosecuted, women are more likely to have lesser charges included as an option * when prosecuted, women are less likely to be convicted * when convicted, women are less likely to receive a custodial sentence * when sentenced to incarceration, men serve sentences 63% longer than women These differences between how men and women are treated in the criminal system are larger, across the board, than between blacks and whites. So here we have an issue that can be boiled down to this astoundingly racist argument: * Blacks are severely disproportionately represented in prison populations. * This is evidence that blackness or black culture promotes criminal behavior. * Because blacks are more prone to criminal behavior, they should be treated more harshly by the criminal system. * Because blacks are treated more harshly by the system, they are the majority of the incarcerated. * This is evidence that blackness or black culture promotes criminal behavior. If anyone takes offence at that little bit of highly racist circular reasoning, they should reject ANY argument that masculine norms or masculine culture cause criminality in men. To accept such an argument, when there is so much evidence pointing to the fact that we treat criminal behavior in women completely differently than in men, is bigotry. ...I believe the term rekt may be appropriate here. What would we do without Karen? Telegraph article : tinyurl/mboedhy Karens comment : tinyurl/pnqctvk
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 06:53:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015