Male perpetrators have long been over-represented in the criminal justice system. This seems to have resulted in a picture of perpetrators as generally being male. This study aims to investigate differences in the portrayal of perpetrators in relation to gender in the Swedish justice system, by performing a discourse analysis on twelve judgements with assault as the main crime classification. Previous research shows that female perpetrators more often are treated with leniency by the court, compared to male perpetrators. This usually leads to women receiving shorter sentences. There have also been studies that show that in media and literature, female perpetrators are portrayed as less, or in cases of severe violent crimes as more, responsible for the crime committed, than a male would be for the equivalent crime. This study shows that female perpetrators are portrayed as less responsible for their violent actions in regards to the crime committed, than male perpetrators. The discourse analysis of the judgments shows that there is a tendency to portray the women’s violence as depending on circumstances, and the men’s violence as depending on them as persons. This indicates that there are discourses in society that establish women as non-violent and men as violent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-194079 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Stenlund, Kimberly |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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