Police Disposal of Female Detainees: An Examination of Police Practice in Seven London Stations

Abstract

A study of mentally disordered people in London police stations allowed the authors to obtain information on everyone arrested and brought to those stations. This paper presents the data in respect of female detainees who comprised 16 per cent of the population. When arrests for loitering are excluded, and matched for type of offence, the pattern of disposal was for women to be cautioned more often than men and for the latter group to be charged more frequently than women. Some such differences are likely to be due to differences in the respective criminal records of male and female detainees. There was no evidence that women were being treated more severely than men and the findings are in line with the results of enquiries into the sentencing practices of both magistrates and Crown Courts.