Petty Criminality, Gender Bias, and Judicial Practice in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Abstract

Recent studies on gender and crime tend to emphasize the differences in the treatment of men and women by the criminal courts. Historians researching western European criminal justice have proved that in many instances women were treated with more leniency than men. For London, between 1780 and 1820, Peter King has shown that the judges and juries of the Old Bailey were more likely to sentence a male suspect to death than a woman and that acquittal rates were higher for women. 1 Deirdre Palk, building on King's findings for the same period, has pointed out that gender may also have played a role in the discretion shown by decision-makers when granting a pardon. 2 Work on female prosecution and sentencing for other countries or cities highlights a similar gender bias towards women: for instance, Renée Martinage and subsequently Virginie Despres have examined the assizes of northern France in the first half of the nineteenth century, noting that when men and women were accused of stealing food, juries were more likely to set a woman free than a man. 3 Shapiro and Ferguson, both working on the Parisian assizes, have highlighted the indulgence shown by juries and magistrates towards women who performed according to gender norms and emphasized their own status as victims. 4 For Italy, Mary Gibson shows that, at the end of the nineteenth century, women accused of infanticide and abortion were treated more favorably by the penal code if they carried out the act in order to "save their own honor." 5 Likewise, Dora Dumont has explained that the Bolognese tribunal at the very start of the nineteenth century was not inclined to prosecute women who took part in rural riots. 6 Similar conclusions were drawn in the Netherlands: Albert Eggens highlights how criminal women from * The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Policing and the Courts

“…Kruttschnitt and Savolainen (2009) did not find preferential treatment for women in terms of sentencing in Finland, a country deemed to have greater gender equality than the United States or UK. Pluskota's (2018) historical research into the sentencing of petty offences in lower courts in nineteenth-century Bologna, Amsterdam and Le Havre revealed sentencing was not gendered. The trial process was rapid and of low public interest.…”