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Serious Violent Offenses and Sentencing Decisions in China—Are There Any Gender Disparities?

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Abstract

Research based on data from Western countries on gender and sentencing has resulted in three competing theories: the paternalism/chivalry theory, the evil woman theory, and the family-based justice theory. Using court data from China, this study examines the characteristics of violent capital offenses and assesses the possible impact of gender on sentencing decisions. While gender did not have a significant net impact on sentencing outcomes in regression analyses, the results of the qualitative comparative analysis suggest that unique profiles of the female capital murder cases had more severe case characteristics than their male counterparts did. Case narratives further suggest that both the paternalism and evil woman theories may be applicable in the Chinese context.

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Notes

  1. The Criminal Law was most recently amended in 2011, and the amended law abolished the application of the death penalty in 13 non-violent, economic crimes. For a complete version of the new 2012 Criminal Law (in Chinese), see http://www.szxingshi.com/95w.html (last accessed on November 12, 2012).

  2. This policy was established in 2007. Prior to 2007, the Supreme People’s Court’s review was waived in some types of cases such as murder and robbery. For a detailed review of changes in death penalty laws, see Lu and Miethe (2005).

  3. Not all judicial judgment documents contain offenders’ demographic information, particularly marital status, education, and employment. Because of the large missing data on these variables, we did not include these variables in the analyses.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-5009, USA

    Hong Lu

  2. Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, OSU-Tulsa, 700N. Greenwood Ave., MH 2223, Tulsa, OK, 74106, USA

    Bin Liang

  3. Draper Hall 211 School of Criminal Justice, SUNY, University at Albany, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Siyu Liu

Authors
  1. Hong Lu
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  2. Bin Liang
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  3. Siyu Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hong Lu.

Appendix List of Data Sources

Appendix List of Data Sources

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Lu, H., Liang, B. & Liu, S. Serious Violent Offenses and Sentencing Decisions in China—Are There Any Gender Disparities?. Asian Criminology 8, 159–177 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-012-9155-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-012-9155-x

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