Culturally derived standards of attractiveness are used in determining the treatment women receive in various aspects of their lives, including the criminal justice system. Examination of the files from the California Youth Authority from the 1960s indicated that male intake personnel often commented on the physical attributes of the female wards. This was most likely to occur when the ward had at least one charge of “immorality” on her record. When more recent files were examined, notations on the physical attractiveness were least likely to occur when the wards had been committed to the institution for serious violations.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allen-Hagen, Barbara
. 1991. Children in Custody 1989. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
2.
Cain, Maureen
. 1989. Growing Up Good: Policing the Behavior of Girls in Europe. London: Sage.
3.
Calahan, M. W.
1986. Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States 1950-1984. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
4.
Chesney-Lind, Meda. 1971. Female Juvenile Delinquency in Hawaii. Master's thesis, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
5.
Chesney-Lind, Meda
. 1973. Judicial enforcement of the female sex role. Issues in Criminology8:51-70.
6.
Chesney-Lind, Meda
and Randall Shelden. 1992. Girls, Delinquency, and the Juvenile Justice System. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
7.
Clifford, Mark
and Elaine Walster. 1973. “The Effect of Physical Attractiveness on Teacher Expectations.”Sociology of Education46:248-258.
8.
Costello, J. C.
and N. L. Worthington. 1991. Incarcerating status offenders: Attempts to circumvent the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review16:41-81.
9.
Crause, Bryant B.
and Albert Mehrabian. 1977. “Affiliation of Opposite-Sexed Strangers.”Journal of Research in Personality11:38-47.
10.
Dion, Karen
. 1973. “Physical Attractiveness and Evaluation of Children's Transgressions.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology24:207-218.
11.
Dion, Karen
, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster. 1973. “What Is Beautiful Is Good.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology24:285-290.
12.
Efran, Michael
. 1974. “The Effect of Physical Appearance on the Judgement of Guilt, Interpersonal Attraction, and Severity of Recommended Punishment.”Journal of Experimental Research in Personality8:45-54.
13.
Emerson, Robert
. 1969. Judging Delinquents. Chicago: Aldine.
14.
Flanagan, Timothy J.
and Edmund F. McGarrell, eds. 1986. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics—1985. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
15.
Gold, Steven
. 1971. “Equal Protection for Girls in Need of Supervision in New York State.”New York Law Forum17:570-591.
16.
Hancock, L.1981. “The Myth That Females Are Treated More Leniently Than Males in the Juvenile Justice System.”Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology16:4-14.
17.
Heilman, Madeline
and Lois Sarawatari. 1979. “When Beauty Is Beastly: The Effects of Appearance and Sex on Evaluations of Job Applicants for Managerial and Nonmanagerial Jobs.”Organizational Behavior and Human Performance23:360-372.
18.
Heilman, Madeline
and Melanie Stopeck. 1985. “Attractiveness and Corporate Success: Different Causal Attributions for Males and Females.”Journal of Applied Psychology70:379-388.
19.
hooks, bell
. 1992. Black Looks. Boston: South End Press.
20.
Jamieson, Katherine M.
and Timothy Flanagan, eds. 1987. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics—1986. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
21.
Murstein, B.
and P. Christy. 1976. “Physical Attractiveness and Marriage Adjustment in Middle Aged Couples.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology34:537-542.
22.
Price, Richard
and Steven Vandenberg. 1979. “Matching for Physical Attractiveness in Married Couples.”Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin5:398-399.
23.
Rafter, Nicole
. 1990. Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
24.
Saiki, Scott
. 1990. “Girls, Double Standards and Status Offenses in Hawaii's Juvenile Court.” Unpublished paper. William Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii.
25.
Schlossman, Steve
and Stephanie Wallach. 1978. “The Crime of Precocious Sexuality: Female Delinquency in the Progressive Era.”Harvard Educational Review48:65-94.
26.
Schwartz, Ira M.
, M. Stekette, and V. Schneider. 1990. “Federal Juvenile Justice Policy and the Incarceration of Girls.”Crime & Delinquency36:503-520.
27.
Shelden, Randall
. 1981. “Sex Discrimination in the Juvenile Justice System: Memphis, Tennessee, 1900-1971.” In Comparing Male and Female Offenders, edited by M. Q. Warren. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
28.
Sigall, Harold
and Nancy Ostrove. 1975. “Beautiful But Dangerous: Effects of Offender Attractiveness and Nature of Crime on Juridic Judgement.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology31:410-414.
29.
Stewart, John
. 1980. “Defendant's Attraction as a Factor in the Outcome of Criminal Trials: An Observational Study.”Journal of Applied Social Psychology10:348-361.
30.
Stretch, Richard
and Charles Figley. 1980. “Beauty and the Beast: Predictions of Interpersonal Attraction in a Dating Experiment.”Psychology, a Quarterly Journal of Human Behavior17:34-43.
31.
Walster, Elaine
, E. Aronson, D. Abrahams, and L. Rottman. 1966. “Importance of Physical Attractiveness in Dating Behavior.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology4:508-516.
32.
Warren, Marguerite Q.
and Jill Rosenbaum. 1986. “Criminal Careers of Female Offenders.”Criminal Justice and Behavior13:393-418.
33.
Weisberg, D. Kelly
. 1985. Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
34.
White, Gregory
. 1980. “Physical Attractiveness and Courtship Progress.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology39:660-668.
35.
Winick, Charles
and Paul M. Kinsie. 1972. The Lively Commerce. New York: Signet.
