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1 Mark Sherman, Women Offenders and Their Children 1 (2001)

handle is hein.congcourts/sobwome0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Woe Ofedr In terC ide byFakDhra n an era when so many of our legal theorists and institutions are focused on gender equality . . . the question 'why focus on women offenders?' is a legiti- mate one, wrote Judge Patricia M. Wald this spring in Criminal Justice magazine. Wald, who served for 20 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was addressing the conundrum of equal but different treatment of women in the federal judi- ciary. It is commonly under- stood, Wald continued, that women offenders as a group display significant differences from their male counterparts in ways that materially affect the goals of sentencing. Among these differences, Wald noted, were lower convic- tion rates for violent offens- es or major drug offenses, the absence of prior crimi- nal records, and the great- er likelihood of being the primary caretakers of young children at the time of arrest (children are far more likely to be consigned to state care if their mother, rather than their father, is imprisoned, she point- ed out). Other differences Wald cit- ed were women offenders' dis- tinct physical and mental health needs, their greater like- lihood to have a history of sex- ual or physical abuse, and their greater vulnerability to physi- cal and sexual abuse from guards and other personnel. On the positive side, female offend- ers showed lower recidivism rates, Weld noted, and a greater abil- ity to change motivation and attitudes than male offenders. Wald concluded, These differences in men and women offenders strongly suggest that the goals of sentencing may be best ad- dressed by looking careful- ly at differences from, as well as commonalities with, male offenders- both individually and as a group. She added that the U.S. Sentencing Guide- lines (USSG), while commanding that gender never be a relevant factor in sentencing . . . base their core sentences on a predominantly male be- havior pattern. Thus, when the same sentence is levied on a female and a male offender, it can im- pose far greater depriva- tions on the female be- cause of her gender. The Caretaker Prob er-n As law professor Myrna Raed- er, an expert on sentencing of women, and Leslie Acoca, di- rector of the Women and Girls

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