The impact of gender roles on verdicts and sentences in cases of filicide

Abstract

Although mothers and fathers are equally likely to kill their children, maternal filicide cases tend to draw more media coverage and community outrage. While traditional gender role expectations appear to contribute to the community response that follows a report of filicide – and influence media representations – little is known about the offenders’ treatment in the criminal justice system. Drawing on theorizing within gender studies, this article examines relationships between traditional gender role expectations and court case outcomes in cases of maternal and paternal filicide. Findings indicate that both verdicts and sentences in these cases vary by gender and that, for female offenders, the differential treatment is related to how well they appear to fit traditional gender roles.

Keywords:

• gender roles
• filicide
• criminal justice system

Notes

1. This is an approximate figure based on information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. McKee (2006) explains reasons for inaccuracies in prevalence rates for filicide cases, including criteria that, for each case, the child’s body must be discovered, the cause of death must be positively determined, the act must be deemed intentional, and the parent must be convicted. There surely are cases of filicide in which these criteria are not established.

2. We urge caution when assessing the reliability of these data, as the US Department of Justice records depend on voluntary reporting from local agencies (which may or may not keep high-quality records) and include cases in which the offender is a step-parent, not the biological parent.

3. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) include the age, sex, and race of offenders and victims, as well as victim–offender relationships, weapons used, and numbers of offenders. However, we were interested in much deeper information about each case for this study. Further, the SHR do not include the names of offenders, so we were unable to use the database to aid in the search for cases.

4. We later added a ‘method category’ variable that coded each killing method as ‘gentler/feminine’, ‘violent/masculine’, or ‘combination of gentle and violent’, based on findings in the literature.

5. The only information we collected about victim age was whether or not at least one victim in a case of filicide was a newborn. Other researchers (e.g. Bourget et al., 2007; Valenca et al., 2011) have indicated the importance of distinguishing between the killing of an infant (neonaticide) and the killing of an older child. We did not include ages of victims in our analysis because of the difficulty raised by cases with multiple victims.

6. We focused on US filicide cases for two major reasons. First, our arguments about the influence of gender roles on criminal justice outcomes are culturally specific and may not apply cross-nationally. Second, because of vast differences in criminal justice policies and procedures among nations, it would be difficult to compare verdicts and sentences of international cases with any validity.

7. Some scholars (Daly & Wilson, 1994; Weekes-Shackelford & Shackelford, 2004) have found differences in the commission of child murder between biological parents and step-parents.

8. Cases in which offenders committed suicide would not have gone to trial, and verdicts and sentences are dependent variables in this study.

9. Information about paternal filicide cases was much more difficult to locate. Because paternal filicides generally are not considered as newsworthy as maternal filicides, they often receive very little coverage in the news media. When these cases are covered, information tends to lack the depth and breadth of that included in articles about maternal filicide.

10. Race, socioeconomic status, and educational attainment were not included as variables because of difficulty in their establishment for most cases.

11. Consistent with findings from previous studies, no fathers in this study had killed a newborn.