Female convict

“ In dealing with female offenders, we have to encounter the same incentives, the same passions that influence the males; and most of the same crimes that are punished in the male convict department are here expiated by the females. But the mode of dealing must vary with the varying circumstances of the prisoner; and those circumstances must greatly depend upon the character of the individual, resulting from her sex and the condition of her earlier life. ”

“ The girls in the reformatory work half a day, and are in school the other half.
This experiment of the control of a State-prison by women is regarded as doubtful by some critics, who say that women will obey a man when they will not obey a woman. Female convicts, because they have fallen lower than men, or by reason of their more nervous organization, are commonly not so easily controlled as male convicts, and it is insisted that they indulge in less “tantrums” under male than under female authority. ”

“ And yet an enlightened and chivalrous public opinion tolerates the most fiendish barbarities and excogitated cruelties being perpetrated upon male convicts in our gaols, while it shudders with horror at the notion of female convicts being accorded any severity of punishment at all even for the same, or, for that matter, more heinous offences. A particularly crass and crucial illustration is that infamous piece of one-sided sex legislation which has already occupied our attention in the course of the present volume—to wit, the so-called “White Slave Traffic Act” 1912. ”

“ The board of trustees are women, the superintendent, physician, and keepers are women. In one building, but in separate departments, were the female convicts, 42 in number, several of them respectable-looking elderly women who had killed their husbands, and about 150 young girls. The convicts and the girls—who are committed for restraint and reform—never meet except in chapel, but it is more than doubtful if it is wise for the State to subject girls to even this sort of contiguity with convicts, and to the degradation of penitentiary suggestions. ”

“ The neglect of the female convicts in this country is a disgrace to our national character, as well as a national sin. Many do not live out half their days, from their habits of vice. When I am called to visit them on their dying beds, my mind is greatly pained, my mouth is shut ”

“ This state of public opinion reacts, of course, upon the tribunals and has the result that women are practically free to commit any offence they please, with always a splendid sporting chance of getting acquitted altogether, and a practical certainty that even if convicted they will receive farcical sentences, or, should the sentence be in any degree adequate to the offence, that such sentence will not be carried out. The way in which criminal law is made a jest and a mockery as regards female prisoners, the treatment of criminal suffragettes, is there in evidence. ”

“ Penal Servitude is the same in its essential features for men as for women, except that the latter under the Progressive Stage System are able to earn marks entitling them to a maximum remission of one-third, and, in certain cases, are eligible to be sent to a Refuge under conditional licence for the last nine months of their sentence. The number of female convicts in the country has been steadily falling. ”

“ If it is important to keep men as much as possible out of prison, it is doubly necessary to keep out women; but it is, at the same time, a much harder thing to accomplish. This arises from the fact that the great bulk of female offenders enter the criminal arena after the age of twenty-one, and can only be dealt with by a sentence of imprisonment. ”

“ In a very substantial proportion, therefore, of all prosecutions for crime a woman is one of the chief actors. The law of the land compels the female prisoner to submit the question of her guilt or innocence to twelve individuals of the opposite sex; and permits the female complainant to rehearse the story of her wrongs before the same collection of colossal intellects and adamantine hearts. ”

“ But it is not merely in cases of murder, attempted murder or serious assault that justice is mocked by the present state of our law and its administration in the interests of the female sex. The same attitude is observed, the same farcical sentences on women, whether the crime be theft, fraud, common assault, criminal slander or other minor offences. We have the same preposterous excuses admitted, the same preposterous pleas allowed, and the same farcical sentences passed—if, indeed, any sentence be passed at all. ”

“ Our present society, based as it is on private property-holding, and which usually punished with the utmost severity any breach of the sanctity of private property, waives its claims where women are concerned. Similarly arson under circumstances directly endangering human life, for which the law prescribes the maximum sentence of penal servitude for life, is considered adequately punished by a week or two's imprisonment when those convicted of the crime are of the female sex. ”

“ At the same time, the inferiority of woman was never conceived as so great as to diminish seriously, much less to eliminate altogether, her responsibility for crimes she might commit. There were cases, of course, such as that of offences committed by women under coverture, in which a diminution of responsibility was recognised and was given effect to in condonation of the offence and in mitigation of the punishment. But there was no sentiment in general in favour of a female more than of a male criminal. ”

“ The law strikes men and women indifferently with the same penalties of penal servitude and imprisonment. In the case of women it only provides that they shall be separated from the other sex: that they shall be in the charge of female officers, and that they shall be relieved from the harder forms of labour. Generally speaking, the methods of punishment are the same, subject to such modification and exceptions as difference of sex obviously demands. ”

“ The Court also stressed that " [m] ore [was] at stake" than a risk to individual female employees: "The likelihood that inmates would assault a woman because she was a woman would pose a real threat not only to the victim of the assault but also to the basic control of the penitentiary and protection of its inmates and the other security personnel." ”

“ Gibson and Miss Pomfrey, the Lady Superintendents of Woking and Winchester convict refuges, give similar evidence as to the deterioration of female criminals—the latter lady assenting to Lord Kiniberley's summary of her evidence in Q 7,439: "That in the prisons we are gradually getting down to the residuum, as it were, of the criminal population." ”

“ Thus, as has already been pointed out, while it is popularly believed that women are almost never convicted of crime, and particularly of homicide, the fact is, at least in New York County, that a much greater proportion of women charged with murder are convicted than of men charged with the same offence. To read the newspapers one would suppose that the mere fact that the defendant was a [Pg 335] female instantly paralyzed the minds of the jury and reduced them to a state of imbecility. ”

“ Women are also more hardened criminals than men. According to the statistics of English prisons, women who have been once convicted are much more likely to be reconvicted than men, [26] and the prison returns of Continental countries tell the same tale.
The facts relating to female crime having been stated, it will now be our business to inquire why women, on the whole, commit fewer crimes than men. The most obvious answer is that they are better morally. ”

“ The evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not given effect to, the female prisoner being almost invariably reprieved. In [65] most cases where there is conviction at all, it is for manslaughter and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed. Cases confirming what is here said will be given later on. There is one point, however, to be observed here, and that is the crushing incidence of the law of libel. ”

“ Ought not restraining and protecting care to have been provided for her in some other place, and her means utilised to allow her suitable comforts? But while there are numbers of similar women dragging out their weary lives in prison, there are still a greater number in whom the passion or habit of stealing is but a passing phase, and who [65] pay a heavy penalty for belonging to the female sex. I have in my mind a large number of girls, ages varying from twelve to twenty years. Scores of mothers have consulted me about such girls, and probably hundreds still consult our magistrates. ”

“ Very recently this dangerous enlargement of the meaning of the phrase ‘emancipation of woman’ has been fortified with a strange advocacy by the female ‘champions of their sex.’ Their argument runs this way: ‘We are denied a voice in the making of the laws relating to infliction of the death penalty; it is unjust to hold us to an accountability to which we have not assented.’ Of course this argument is as broad as the entire body of law; it amounts to nothing less than a demand for general immunity from all laws, for to none of them has woman’s assent been asked or given. ”

“ Thus far boys only have been mentioned; but a like method of treatment applies to girls whenever there is occasion, which is not often. Fortunately for the world in general and this city in particular, the female sex is far less prone to crime and venality. This is specially prominent in the Children’s Court, for, eliminating improper [Pg 233] guardianship—neither boy nor girl being responsible therefor—girl prisoners constituted but four per cent. of the cases. In the police courts women make up twenty per cent. ”

“ With a view, possibly, to promoting respect for law by making the statutes so conform to public sentiment that none will fall into disesteem and disuse, it has been advocated that there be a formal recognition of sex in the penal code, by making a difference in the punishment of men and of women for the same crimes and misdemeanors. The argument is that if women were "provided" with milder punishment juries would sometimes convict them, whereas they now commonly get off altogether. ”

“ Household extravagance, extravagance in dress, the mad ambition of many English women to live in what they call "better style" than their neighbours sends not a few men to penal servitude. The proportion of female crime in a community is also to a very considerable extent determined by the social condition of women. In all countries where social habits and customs constrain women to lead retiring and secluded lives the number of female criminals descends to a minimum. ”

“ The curious fact in female crime is that one-seventh of the women committed to prison had already been convicted from eleven to twenty times. It has been well said from the above proportions that women are less criminal according to the figures, because when a woman wants a crime committed she can generally find a man to do it for her. ”

“ It is again often supposed, and this is also a mistake, that in individual cases of dispute between the sexes, the verdict, let us say of a jury of men, in favour of the female prisoner or the female litigant is solely or even mainly determined by the fact of the latter's good looks. This may indeed play a part; but it is easy to show from records of cases that it is a subordinate one—that, whatever her looks or her age may be, the verdict is given her not so much because she is a pretty woman as because she is a woman. ”

“ The whole question of French female criminality centres within this prison of Saint Lazare. It is a remarkable fact that fewer crimes are committed by females than males in France, and the rule obtains the world over. ”

“ Even if women are found guilty it is usual for a virtually nominal sentence to be passed. Should, however, a woman by any chance be convicted of a heinous crime, such as murder or maiming, under specially aggravated circumstances, and a sentence be passed such as would be unanimously sanctioned by [22] public opinion in the case of a man, then we find the whole Feminist world up in arms. ”

“ Under them women are arrested, condemned, and sentenced to a terrible punishment, without any open accusation or public trial; by simple brute force they are compelled to submit, despite their pleading, their cries, their struggles; they have no redress, no assistance; they are degraded both in their own sight and in the sight of all who deal with them; a free woman is deprived by force of the custody of her own body, and all human right is outraged in her person—and for what? ”

“ At least they are the natural judgments for a large number of women, or these tragedies would not occur. No doubt as woman enters the field of industry formerly monopolized by man, and as she takes her part in politics and sits on juries, the percentage of female criminals will rapidly increase. In fact, the percentage of women prisoners has been climbing for many years. As she takes her place with men she will be more and more judged as men are judged, and will commit the crimes that men commit, and perhaps furnish her fair quota to the penitentiaries and jails. ”

“ The offence considered as next in point of enormity to Rape, is Forcible Marriage, or Defilement of Women: but it is somewhat remarkable, that by confining the punishment to offences against women of estate only, the moral principles are made to yield to political considerations; and the security of property in this instance, is deemed more essential, than the preservation of female chastity.
In short, the property of the woman is the measure of the crime; the statutes of the 3d of Henry the Seventh, cap. ”