
Men are statistically more likely to go to prison than women for the same crime. Feminists and Men’s Rights Activists alike should be outraged.
People forget that prisons aren’t always there to protect us; in fact, they often aren’t there to help us at all. When you have a primarily or entirely privatized penal system, prisons become a business and their primary reason for existing is to make money.
In America today the prison business is booming… and men are disproportionately paying the price.
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According to a recent study by Sonja Starr, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, men on average receive 63 percent longer prison sentences than women who commit comparable crimes. Reinforcing data accumulated from numerous other surveys on the subject, Starr also found that women are twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted of a crime – which may explain why 90% of the prison population is male – and estimated that the gender gap in sentencing could be as much as six times as large as that between white and non-whites (more on that in a moment). Despite this trend, the existing tendency among progressives has been to push for changes that only exacerbate the problem, such as the concerted effort among British feminists to abolish female prisons altogether.
In America today the prison business is booming… and men are disproportionately paying the price.
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These facts put advocates of prison reform in a tricky dilemma. On the one hand, leftists who point out that female convicts “often have poor mental health or are poorly educated, have not committed violence and have children to look after” aren’t wrong. However, because these same traits frequently apply to men who are convicted of crimes (indeed, a compelling case could be made that they describe a considerable fraction of our prison population), it speaks volumes that this data is used to widen the sentencing gender gap instead of confront how our sentencing system is fundamentally draconian.
After all, the gender gap is far from the only problem facing American prisons today. There is also the problem that police are more likely to target non-whites than whites, who are in turn less likely to be able to afford quality legal counsel. As a result, one out of every three black males born today will be incarcerated during their lifetime, as compared to one out of six Latino males and one out of 17 white males. According to the 2010 Census, almost one in ten black men between the ages of 20 and 34 were in prison; by contrast, the numbers for white men in the same bloc was roughly one in fifty. Needless to say, non-whites make up a majority of the more than 2.4 million people living behind bars as of March 2014, a number that is likely to be much higher than 3 million when you take recidivism rates into account.
Of course, because the American prison-industrial complex is incredibly lucrative (as of 2013 it was worth $70 billion), politicians are influenced by lobbyists for groups like the Corrections Corporation of America to create laws that put more people in jail rather than fewer, especially through tighter drug laws. As a result, Americans have been left with a penal system in which poor boys, particularly of color, are more likely to go to prison for the same crime as a rich white girl.
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In short, the issue of the prison-industrial complex is an intersectional one encompassing state corruption, capitalism run amok, race, and – when it comes to the heavier sentencing for men – gender inequality. So why isn’t the last issue receiving more attention?
‘A lot of times these issues will get drowned out because of highly public fighting between Men’s Rights Activists and feminists, which winds up overshadowing the legitimate concerns that many MRAs have,’ explained Adam Hollingsworth… ‘The sentencing gap should be a large issue not only for Men’s Rights Activists, but for feminists. It is a clear example of how our justice system treats women as if they have less agency and are thus less accountable for their actions.’
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“A lot of times these issues will get drowned out because of highly public fighting between Men’s Rights Activists and feminists, which winds up overshadowing the legitimate concerns that many MRAs have,” explained Adam Hollingsworth, a Men’s Rights Activist who was interviewed for this article. “The sentencing gap should be a large issue not only for Men’s Rights Activists, but for feminists. It is a clear example of how our justice system treats women as if they have less agency and are thus less accountable for their actions.”
The problem, it seems, is that it is often much easier to put men in jail. As Hollingsworth implicitly pointed out, the conventional assumption is that women can’t hack it in prison, whether because they need to raise families, or are too emotionally frail, or literally lack the physical strength to survive behind bars. Within this zeitgeist, a man who steps up and takes prison time for a woman can be depicted as chivalrous and noble; inversely, a man who expected a woman to do the same thing, meanwhile, would seem dishonorable and cowardly.
It must be emphasized that this story isn’t about calling women out for using the “woman card,” but about making sure that both genders are equally accountable for their actions. In America, the popular cliché among the law-and-order set is that “If you do the crime, you should do the time.” It says nothing about what you have in your pants, and any justice system that factors that into its decisions –knowingly or unknowingly – is reinforcing patriarchal assumptions that simultaneously demean women and are unjust to men. Logically speaking, there is no getting around the fact that in a free society, the same sentences should be meted out regardless of sex.
Instead truly meaningful prison reform should focus on (a) creating racial, gender, and economic equity in the distribution of justice and (b) cranking up pressure on politicians so that they will stop finding reasons to incarcerate people. Certainly we can start with lessening offenses on minor drug charges, particularly those involving marijuana; finding alternative methods of rehabilitation for juvenile offenders convicted of committing petty crimes, particularly those that focus on community participation and remembering that “it takes a village to raise a child”; and making sure that our prisons take the severity of a convict’s mental illness into account when determining how he or she should be treated during their incarceration.
If nothing else, however, any feminist should be outraged to know the statistics about the sentencing gap. It is proof that fellow human beings are receiving unjust and unequal treatment, even as it simultaneously demonstrates that our justice system has a misogynistic mentality based on outdated assumptions about women being the weaker sex. This is a cause in which feminists should find common cause with Men’s Rights Activists, in the same spirit that Emma Watson articulated to the United Nations last September: “Gender equality is your issue too.”
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Photo: Flickr – “175 Freedom for a Man”/nebojsa mladjenovic
Sentencing law provides very limited formal
mechanisms to account for such factors—which is probably why, with women, they appear
to mostly be considered sub rosa.
This was a good article up until you twisted a gynocentric (by definition) bias in the prison system into a narrative about misogyny. Dogmatic thinking is characterized by highly compartmentalized systems of belief and disbelief. The data you presented directly contradicted the theory of patriarchy and yet you claim that it demonstrates misogyny when it actually demonstrates misandry. So while almost everything about the article is good, the appeal to feminists is nothing short of sycophantic.
The referenced paper by Sonja Starr is quite good. It is freely available. The conclusion pasted below gets well to the heart of it without mincing words. “Policymakers might simply be untroubled by leniency toward women. They are a small minority of defendants, and when disparities favor traditionally disempowered groups, they might raise fewer concerns. But the gender disparity issue need not be framed in terms of how women are treated. One could ask: why are men treated so harshly, if women are (apparently) treated otherwise? It is hard to dismiss this question as trivial: over two million American men… Read more »
Prosecutors, judges, and legislators, yes indeed. Let’s not forget juries and voters as well. This is not just a top-down, elite-created issue. Millions of average, everyday people support this inequity on a daily basis. That’s one thing that makes it so difficult to change.
Thank you, Good Men Project, for such an unbiased, fair minded post.
Bravo for GMP for raising this issue. Our society and our legal system still to this day, empathesizes with women more than they do with men. There used to be a time, where in parts of the country, women could do just about anything and never be prosicuted for it, because the thought or idea of sentencing a woman to prison was unheard of. Unfortionately, there is still a double standard when it comes to prison sentencing and gender. In our courts, people still are more easily able to empathize with women that are accused of committing a certain crime.… Read more »
This inequity could only start to change if our society abandoned some really, really deeply held assumptions about sex and gender, and not just ideas about crime and punishment. For example, this incredibly sexist idea that mothers should get lighter sentences “because they have children to raise.” That’s just one more case of equating womanhood with motherhood, and assuming that mothers are parents and fathers are not. There will always gender inequity in sentencing as long as women are assumed to be better parents and as long as fathers are considered more optional or less important than mothers. This assumption… Read more »
There is nothing more damaging to the vast majority of men than the patriarchy and white knight/chivalrous men. These men are extremely naive, ignorant and self-serving. Men in power will gladly throw the majority of men under the bus to gain favor with the gynocracy, to keep their jobs (get re-elected) and to maintain the status quo (see ‘1 in 5’ and ‘yes means yes’). When it was asked for, the patriarchy gave women the right to vote, the right to higher education and the right to work. Unless they sign up for selective service, men still don’t have many… Read more »
May I ask in what country you live in ?
And is what you describe here you personal experience growing up and living in that country all your life?
” men give all their power over to their wife when they marry”.
ALL THEIR POWER?
in what country ?????????????
In every country that models its family law on the british common law – USA, Canada, Australia, NewZealand, United Kingdom, India, South Africa etc.
In these countries a man looses all legal entity to his own property past, present and future. Whilst the status quo remains he is safe. Should the woman feel scorned he is at the mercy of his wife and the family court.
Recent examples from Sweden:
Men who become suspect of a crime may lose the custody of their own child(ren) in the blink of an eye, but if/when they are found innocent they may face year-long struggles to regain the custody or even vistor’s rights.
Also, men who bring in a severely sick or injured child to hospital care. Should the child tragically pass away, the man is instantly arrested as a suspect of battery/murder/homicide, even before the cause of death has been established!
Sweden makes me sad. I love the Swedish people, I have spent time in the country side. But the hipocracy and crazy that exists within the upper echelons of its liberal government is beyond words. The documentary Gender Wars – Könskriget, literally made me sick. What I was never able to establish is what happened to the second girl in the film? Did she survive? Those two girls ordeals sounded absolutely gruesome, especially as they were both victims of previous abuse. An organisation terrorised them to the brink of suicide, all as to push an agenda of an imaginary satanic… Read more »
Oh that’s some nonsense.
So is there at least some sense of consistency here in the form of holding women to these same laws?
Josh, Well, at least we have made some advances regarding custody, alimony, and the division of assets in the event of divorces. But I think we have about the same hypocrisy regarding various criminal acts as is desrcibed in the article. There was a lot of hoopla in the media for a long time regarding the so called documentary Gender War, but I managed to avoid seeing it myself, and I can’t remember the final outsome for the participants. Danny, Frankly, no, not what I have noticed. Women committing crimes against, or when having, infant children seem to be largely… Read more »
Josh Can he loose his property also if he has no children with his wife? I am not qualified in these matters but it I think men in Norway are more in control of what they own ., Just like women are. I was married once and we decided to own a home to gether. But we could have chosen to have we call Særeie. It means both enter marrige and continue to own the money,stoks,eqeities, land ,house, etc that they bring into the marriage. But what they build up together in marriag will be divided 50 50 in a divorce.… Read more »
Yes he can.
In the UK recently a man has been ordered to court over the fortune he earn’t 11 years AFTER he divorced his wife. Its not as easy without children involved but it still can and does happen.
First off let me say that with this site being one of far too many where the writers literally only mention MRAs when there is chance to insult and attack them (Mark Greene’s writing being an exception to this) this is a pleasant surprise. I think this goes back to gendering crime as male. Meaning that crime is something that men do because they are men but when women do it its because something made them do it (usually a man). You can especially see this when it comes to sex crimes. A few years ago in Colorado there was… Read more »
Yeah Danny, and although the author feels that this is one topic that both M.R.A.’s and Feminist should both be up in arms about, I suspect that this is one ‘male privilege’ that Feminist are willing to cede.
Absolute gender equality would be extremely distasteful to far too many people for those on the left and right. Absolute gender equity would mean some things that most people would find very hard to accept, or at least very hard to advocate for: Women murdered as often as men Men raped as often as women Women in prison as often as men Women shot by police as often as men Fathers getting custody as often as mothers Women dying on the job as often as men As many male college students as female college students Is anyone really going to… Read more »
I do not see the logic here.
I don’t think that is quite it. If I could borrow your list for moment. I think its more like it would be hard to accept: Men are the majority of victims of nearly every violent non sexual crime. Men are raped much more often that acknowledged due to intentionally limited definitions of rape. Women and men being punished the same for their crimes rather than letting gender determine one’s sentence. Fathers not being intimidated out of fighting for custody. And likewise for custody/visitation orders to be enforced with the same tenacity that child support orders are enforced. A man… Read more »
Fair enough. My list wasn’t meant to be comprehensive, just some examples.
Another great example would be Boko Haram in western Africa. How many news stories are about their girl victims, and how many about their boy victims?
Actually, women are raped more than men, according to the statistics
It was a great article and yet lacking (understandable considering space limitations) in a very major point. When we talk about women’s issues like the gender pay gap, we look at the root causes of the inequality and suggest ways to mitigate those causes. For example, child care is a major contributor so we talk about access to affordable day care / parental leave / etc. We recognize that career choice impacts salary and try to encourage girls to enter STEM. When it comes to boys / men and the incarceration rate, we don’t consider or attempt to ameliorate the… Read more »
Well stated John but sadly, the conclusion is that there will be nothing done, the problem(s) will continue if not continue to get worse. Something that I’ve witnessed through the years is that some courts make attempts for men to turn their lives around. Men who have criminal charges that have a connection to drug use are sent to treatment. Residential treatment that includes step down out-patient as well as movement to housing upon completion of the program. We have a 38 bed unit for adult men as well as a 38 bed adolescent male unit.. The new ACA plan… Read more »
Boys are dropping out of school, yet the focus is on helping girls. Indeed. Even though men and boys do suffer rape, we are told that this does not make them equivalent victims because of the greater statistical and structural pervasiveness of rape that afflicts that women and girls. Okay, fair enough. Yet, whenever there is some trend or development that seems to disproportionately harm or affect male persons, there is always some way to conclude that female persons must actually be the true and relevant victims. Male persons constitute the overwhelming majority of those who are incarcerated, and who… Read more »
what on earth triggered a m o d squad in my last post?
Congrats to GMP for posting this article! The article is great but now the question is when is the fem’sts gonna start to do something? I keep hearing how they care about men and what’s happening. I see article upon article that speak of why men should be fem’st or at least allies but here we are hearing crickets….
I suppose it is fear of what men and boys might be capable of if not “corrected”. It is a cultural bias the Allows government sponsored brutality to flourish.
It’s all about the Empathy Gap between how society sees/treats men and women. Men and boys are seen as responding better to punishment than to understanding and care…..Total BS, as women in general show more risk avoidance, while even a little empathy can have huge positive effects on men and boys.
Men have been and continue to be disposable.
It sound like it is the lobby groups that govern the US and not democratic processes.
Ordinart old fashioned prisons are schools for criminals.
The solution is hardly to give women as long senteces as men ,but rather give men as ” short” sentece as that women get.
If there is such a thing a short sentences at all in USA……..
But why do people in America elect politicans tbat say yes to this system?
@ Silke “But why do people in America elect politicans tbat say yes to this system?” Because in the U.S. men are considered disposable. Not in any official capacity although with selective service being something exclusively demanded of men, you might be able to argue even that point, but it’s a belief woven into the culture. Men are the majority of those killed in war. Men are 90% of industrial accident deaths. Men are 80% of the murder victims even female killers choose male victims most of the time. Spending on health care for men is a small fraction of… Read more »
The third section was one of the most craftily disingenuous things that I have ever read — and as such, one of the most pernicious. There were some logically valid points made in the the last section about the meaning of “gender inequality”, but the rhetoric was poisonous and unsuitable for general distribution. Not suitable for general distribution? According to whom? You? After using statistics to establish the premise that men (especially minorities) are disproportionately incarcerated over women for similar crimes, the third section is dedicated to tying that albatross around womens’ necks. The last sentence of the second section… Read more »
I read the first two sections of this article (above the first two black diamond-white diamond-black diamond symbols) and I found it rather compelling, being that it was largely based on statistics and good citations. However, the last sentence of the second second started to feel like race-baiting. The third section was one of the most craftily disingenuous things that I have ever read — and as such, one of the most pernicious. There were some logically valid points made in the the last section about the meaning of “gender inequality”, but the rhetoric was poisonous and unsuitable for general… Read more »
I’m not sure what issue you have with the article.
Most of the article seemed to hinge on the premise that men need to be incarcerated less. Hence the whole story about how rich companies are becoming through business.
Women don’t get to decide what they want their issues to be when they are busy telling men that they pay gap is their issue and constantly advising us to “check our privilege” .
Liberals are only comfortable addressing the racial sentencing disparity which pales in comparison to the gender sentencing disparity. Weird!!! Just shows how much work men’s rights groups have ahead of them. There is no public acknowledgment that there is even a problem.
You’re right … If it doesn’t have the “race” tag, there is no tag. As it is with police brutality. The son of an associate was beaten by suburban police officers. He file suit and won. Not one mention in the news papers about it. White officers and a white victim …..
Bravo for actually interviewing an MRA and trying to find some common ground. A rare gem on this site.
I find it utterly aggravating that feminists in my country (UK) have such a one-sided view of this problem, when it is men who are more disproportionately affected by inconsistent jail sentencing.
It’s not limited to your country
Ya’ll here posting on behalf of the MRA and saying “feminists don’t care about men” – you see? This is how the fight starts! Without asking our opinion on an issue, you decide and define and articulate what you BELIEVE our position to be, then use this to attack us. If we defend ourselves, you attack some more, explaining to us how you KNOW what we really think and feel. I am a feminist, AND I AM OUTRAGED ABOUT THE INCARCERATION RATE, police brutality, prosecutorial injustices, prison slave labor, the lack of diversionary care offered to boys (esp those of… Read more »
This is how the fight starts! Without asking our opinion on an issue, you decide and define and articulate what you BELIEVE our position to be, then use this to attack us. If we defend ourselves, you attack some more, explaining to us how you KNOW what we really think and feel. Femini sts have been doing this to mras and men in general for decades. Telling us that we want to beat and rape women and want to return to an era where women had no rights and every aspect of their lives is controlled by men. And even… Read more »