Gender Disparity in Domestic Violence Sentencing

But, it is evident that gender disparity in domestic violence sentencing is influenced by many factors. Factors like domestic violence laws, and attitude, gender and approach towards domestic violence have contributed to gender disparity in domestic violence sentencing in a big way. These factors are closely associated with leniency on the female perpetrators of violence against male victims. The study will clearly establish how gender disparity in domestic violence is as a result of various factors: victim’s gender, perpetrator gender, juror gender as well as sexiest attitudes on perception, and verdict decisions in domestic violence cases between the heterosexual partners Gender Disparity in Domestic Violence Sentencing Research on judicial decision and criminal justice punishment consistently show that majority of defendants in domestic violence cases are men, and that most female offenders in those cases receive lenient treatment than similar male counterparts.

The majority of the accused in domestic violence cases for the past years are men. As a result of false perception of the officer, or exaggerated claims by the abuser, the victim may end up being arrested instead of the abuser because these mandatory arrest laws takes away officers’ discretion (Zoeli et al. 2011 as cited in Deveau and Tititampruk, 2014). Also, Nelson (2012, as cited in Wasileska and Davis-Frenzel, 2016), affirmed that the decision of a prosecutor to file charges against domestic violence doer was influenced positively by the initial arrest. Hence, there was a great deal that a police officer could do, which is likely to have increased the rate of conviction without the need for victim’s testimony (Buzawa, 2012). Also, gender disparity in domestic violence sentencing has been greatly influenced by attitude towards gender domestic violence.

Juror gender and victim gender will be within subjects with two levels: male/female. Sexist type will be within subjects with two levels: Hostile/benevolent as well as object of sexist attitude also was within two levels: attitudes towards males/ attitudes towards females. MJ will be assigned randomly to one of the two situations –male victim/ female perpetrator or male perpetrator/ female victim. The independent variable will be MJ Gender, Victim Gender, Benevolent Sexism, Hostile Sexism, Hostility towards Men and Benevolence towards Men. The dependent variables will be verdict, punishment that the offender will receive, offence seriousness, verdict change likelihood, suspect believability, defendant believability, alleged victim responsibility, and defendant responsibility. The students will predominantly come from different disciplines in the Kennesaw State University.

Students studying psychology will be given participation towards their coursework assessment for participating in this study. The participants who will be studying other subjects or non-students will be offered small reward as well as refreshment as token of appreciation for their participation. Materials Groups of students from the university, and indivduals the community wll be approached , andasked to take part in the study about domestic violence, and emphasize to them the sentitivity of the topic. The ones who will be willing to taje part in the study will be randomly located to the two trial experimental packs. The case will be presented in an ambiguous manner; one person word against that of the other, so that it can reveal whether female victims will likely to be believed in than male victims.

The trial summary will be followed by instructions based on the Uited States law around the grievious body harm offence. After being alowed to read all the trial summary information, MJ will be told to give a ruling of ‘Guilty without intent’, Guilty with intent’, or ‘Not Guilty’. They will also be asked to rate how serious they think the case is based on a 7=point scale: 1=Not serious to 7= Very serious. The MJs will also have to indicate the type of punishment that the defendant will have to receive if the proof will be established that the accussed is guilty beyond reasonable doubts. The demographic questionnaire will include info relating to the MJ like age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, and education level.

After, these Mock Jurors will be provided with a sheet debrief them, and showing the purpose of the study plus help contacts in case they will have any arising issues while they are away about the study. The collected data will be subjected to Hostile Sexism (HS), Benevolent Sexism (BS), Hostility towards Men (HM), and Benevolent towards Men (BM) Mock juror. Results Due to the extensive nature of data thst will be collected, this section will mainly give methods to be used in testing all the hypotheses being tested in the study. The hypotheses and respective test will be as follows: Hypothesis 1: Female MJs will more likely to give guilty verdict than male MJs A Pearson Chi-square will be conducted to ascertain juror variance in verdict preferences.

Also, a 2 x 2 ANOVA will be used. In this hypothesis, 2 x 2 will be Juror Gender x Victim Gender, with a dependent variable being seriousness of offence. Hypothesis 7: Traditional view of gender roles will influence the perception seriousness of the domestic violence offence. Using, Glick and Fiske (1996) study, correlation between hostile attitudes and benevolence attitudes (BS and BM) will be determined in this case. Hypothesis 8: All jurors will hold more responsible (blame more) male victims than female victims for the domestic violence enacted against them. Hypothesis 11: Benevolence towards female and male victims plays a role in judgment of victim believability and responsibility (blame). A partial correlation will be performed in this case, which will be looking at the influence of: the BS on victim believability, while controlling for HS, BS while controlling for HS, and the BM ratings on the victims’ responsibility.

Hypothesis 12: Female perpetrated domestic violence against the male victims would likely to receive lenient sentence than male perpetrated domestic violence against female victims. A Pearson Chi-square will be performed to determine the differences in sentence given to male perpetrated violence against female victims, and female perpetrated violence against male victims. Hypothesis 13: Sexist attitudes towards females and males may influence the sentence the perpetrator is likely to receive. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 12, pp. Cho, H. , & Wilke, D. J. Gender differences in the nature of the intimate partner violence and effects of perpetrator arrest on revictimization.  Social Science Quarterly, 96(4), 1117-1135. ForsterLee, R. , ForsterLee, L. , Horowitz, I. & King, E. Henning, K. , & Feder, L. Criminal Prosecution of Domestic Violence Offenses. Criminal Justice and Behavior,32(6), 612-642.