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Structure and Practice of Familial-Based Justice in a Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Kathleen Daly
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Abstract

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Many explanations have been proposed for gender differences in criminal court outcomes, but none has been grounded in a systematic study of the reasoning processes used by court officials in sanctioning male and female defendants. Interviews with thirty-five court officials (prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers, and judges) are presented here to assess extant theory and to offer a reconceptualization of why gender differences may emerge in the course of “doing justice.” The interviews reveal that the sanctioning process is structured by familial paternalism, that is, a concern to protect family life, men's and women's labor for families, and those dependent on defendants. Familial paternalism more accurately explains family- and gender-based disparities in sentencing than existing social control arguments, and it is distinguished from female paternalism, which is based on the view that women, as the “weaker sex,” are subject to greater court protection than men before the criminal court.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 267 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

This research was supported by a fellowship grant from the National Institute of Justice. My thanks to Aida Rodriguez for her encouragement, research assistance, and friendship.

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