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Misogyny: It’s Still the Law—An Empirical Assessment of the Missouri Juvenile Court System’s Processing of Rape and Robbery Offenders

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Abstract

Patriarchal societies have long used their legal systems as a vehicle of oppression. This article examines the extent to which bias against women can still be discerned in the content of the criminal law by comparing and contrasting Missouri’s forcible rape and robbery in the first degree statutes. The study then analyzes the application of these statutes by examining all of the forcible rape and robbery in the first degree cases processed by Missouri’s juvenile court system between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2004 (N = 617). The results of these analyses suggest that Missouri’s robbery statute is more protective of victims than is its rape statute. They also indicate that at least among juveniles, robbery offenders are sanctioned more severely than rape offenders in terms of detention, informal adjustment and adjudication.

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Notes

  1. The American Law Institute developed a Model Penal Code which was published for the first time in 1962 and is periodically updated. The Model Penal Code purports to serve as a model for standardizing criminal law across the fifty states.

  2. Attempts to obtain analogous adult data were unsuccessful and the authors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to DYS for providing us with data.

  3. While it is possible that these 4 cases involved a female perpetrator and a male victim, it is also quite likely that these females were charged with rape as a result of assisting a male in raping another female. Like most jurisdictions, principals of any degree and accessories before the fact are equally liable under Missouri law which provides that “a person is criminally responsible for the conduct of another when… either before or during the commission of an offense with the purpose of promoting the commission of an offense, he aids or agrees to aid or attempts to aid such other person in planning, committing or attempting to commit the offense”. See § 562.041 R.S.Mo. Also like many other jurisdictions, statutory references to the male gender apply to females as well.

  4. A significant Wald statistic permits one to reject the null hypothesis that the logistic regression coefficient is equal to zero and thus establishes the statistical significance of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables [4, p. 579].

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Author notes

  1. Elizabeth Callahan

    Present address: Missouri Attorney General’s Office, Jefferson City, MO, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Saint Louis University, McGannon Hall 249, 3750 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63108-3342, USA

    M. Dyan McGuire

  2. Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Steve Donner & Elizabeth Callahan

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  1. M. Dyan McGuire
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  2. Steve Donner
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  3. Elizabeth Callahan
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Correspondence to M. Dyan McGuire.

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McGuire, M.D., Donner, S. & Callahan, E. Misogyny: It’s Still the Law—An Empirical Assessment of the Missouri Juvenile Court System’s Processing of Rape and Robbery Offenders. Gend. Issues 29, 1–24 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-012-9109-8

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