Disparities in police proceedings and court sentencing for females versus males who commit sexual offences in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether there are disparities in the way in which police proceed against females and males who commit sexual offences. We explored whether there are discrepancies in the severity of court sentences handed down to female and male sexual offenders. Using police and sentencing data, we compared the proportion of females and males who proceeded to court action once charged with a sexual offence and, separately, the severity of sentencing handed down to both genders. In terms of police decision-making processes, compared to males, a smaller proportion of females proceeded to “court action” for their offences. Furthermore, the severity of sentences handed down to males was greater than those handed down to females, both generally and when the sexual offence could be directly matched. These findings are discussed in the context of gender differences in how these crimes are processed and implications for justice, intervention, and community safety.

KEYWORDS:

• Female sexual offender
• sexual offending
• sentencing disparities
• court action
• gender differences

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Darren Walton, Former Director, Research and Evaluation Advisor, New Zealand Police, for his provision of expertise related to police and judicial proceedings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Each individual being counted only once irrespective of the number of proceedings against them.

2 Note that 20 years and over (rather than 18 years and over) was selected due to the data being only available in 5-year age brackets, therefore as to exclude 15-, 16-, and 17 year-olds the 20-year old cut-off was selected.

3 Acts, or intent of acts, of a sexual nature against another person, which are non-consensual or where consent is proscribed (p. 32; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011).

4 In order to provide a score that represents the starting sentence length for a first-time offender the index score for each offence category is based on the 15th percentile of estimated prison days as this was considered most likely to reflect the sentence length starting point for a first-time offender taking into account that actual sentencing data includes case-by-case mitigating circumstances, such as offending history, mental health, and background circumstances.

5 In New Zealand, females cannot be charged for rape. As such we found the closest matching charge (in terms of seriousness) for the three rape offences.

6 In New Zealand, a female is unable to be convicted of rape, which requires a ‘sexual connection … effected by the penetration of person B’s genitalia by person A’s penis’ (Crimes Act 1961 (NZ) s 128(2)). Consequently, as there is no direct female offender match for the conviction of rape we have matched similar offence types.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a James Hume Bequest Fund, Dunedin School of Medicine and by a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand.