Bad or Mad? : A Qualitative Study of How the Gender of a Perpetrator Affects Court Decisions

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis has been to analyze Court cases determined in a Swedish context which included the crime gross assault against a closely related victim. The purpose has also been to investigate the possibility of identifying differences in Court assessments in consideration of a gender perspective and to examine how female and male perpetrators are described and characterized by Courts. The study has had a qualitative orientation and assumed a constructionist and a socio-legal perspective. The data material, consisting of ten cases with male offenders and ten cases with female offenders, has been examined by using a thematic analysis approach, where the results have been related to Nils Christie`s ideal victim theory and to the concept of genus The results of the study showed that Courts were constant in their decisions regarding male offenders, while decisions concerning female offenders appeared to be more varied. All of the male offenders were sentenced to imprisonment, while Courts` choice of sanction regarding female offenders to a high degree consisted of different measures of care. The study claims that there is an indication of that violent male and female offenders are treated differently by Courts and, in accordance to this viewpoint, that criminal men are bad and criminal women are mad.