Death Row and Women :: Feminism Law Culture Essays

Death dustup and WomenIn Hamurabi Law, if someone is accused of murder they must take a leap into the closest river. If the accused d wordsns, the accuser shall take possession of his house. If the accused emerges unhurt, then the accuser is put to demise and his house is given as compensation to the accused. epoch the system of capital punishment in the United States is non instead as random, it has its own problems that can oftentimes cross the fine ancestry among arbitrary and absurd. The discrepancy between white and colored manful inmates is often the subject of debate regarding this issue, and while that subject certainly does be notice, little attention is paid to women as a group on death actors line. It is interesting to explore how society represents and identifies with women on death row in a completely different manner than men or even other minority groups, even though they face connatural discriminations in other facets of life. Why is it that we are able to see effeminates not as killers, but first as women or mothers? Our preconceived conceptions of maternalism and womanhood make a great difference in how we behold female criminals, and in certain cases can be the difference between life and death.According to statistics from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, of the 455 criminals on death row in the state plainly 7 of them are women . This should tip us off to the manner in which we treat female criminals, even in the most pro-death penalty state in the country. Overall, women account for one in eight of people arrested for murder in America, but this ratio sinks to only one in seventy people currently on death row . This discrepancy must be a direct leave behind of something, and is most probably attributed to societys perception of women that place these female criminals as women first, killers second. Its a reflection of societys place that women are less prone to evil than men are, claims Jenni Gainsborough of the A CLU guinea pig Prison Project. We also seem to feel sorrier for women than we do men, and assume that if a woman has committed a crime it is because she has faced hollo in the past (usually inflicted by a man). This is true to some extent as it is claimed that 95% of women in prison were victims of abuse , but the point is that we broadly speaking stress the importance of female abuse while oftentimes neglecting abuse endured by their male counterparts.