Citing figures showing dramatic increases in the number of women imprisoned for drug offenses since 1980, Chesney-Lind (1995: 111) concludes that the ‘war on drugs' has translated into a war on women“ and Durham (1994: 111) suggests that female drug offenders ”… are now being treated like their male counterparts, or even more harshly.“ The purpose of this study is to test the validity of these assertations. We compare the likelihood of incarceration for males and females convicted of drug offenses in Chicago. The results of our analysis reveal that females are significantly less likely than males to be sentenced to prison. Our tests for interaction reveal that preferential treatment is confined to offenders without dependent children and to offenders without a prior conviction for a drug offense. We conclude that chivalry is not dead in Cook County. We also conclude that judges' calculation of the social costs of punishment are not invariant, but reflect the combined effects of the offender's gender, child care responsibilities, prior criminal record, and type of crime.
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