Evaluating the Influence of Gender as an Extralegal Variable on Criminal Judgements in the Field of Drug Crimes (A Case Study of Kashan City)

Arefi, Morteza; Rabiee, Zahra

doi:10.22106/jlj.2024.2006426.5356

Evaluating the Influence of Gender as an Extralegal Variable on Criminal Judgements in the Field of Drug Crimes (A Case Study of Kashan City)

Document Type : Research/Original/Regular Article

Authors

Morteza Arefi ¹

Zahra Rabiee ²

¹ Assistant Professor of Law Department. Bu Ali Sina University

² MA. in Criminal Law & Criminology, University of Kashan

10.22106/jlj.2024.2006426.5356

Abstract

The general belief is that judges obey the law in sentencing and are not influenced by factors beyond the text of law such as race, gender, religion, youth, marital status, social class, etc., but some empirical studies prove that in some cases, judges determine punishments affected by these extra-legal variables. The current research was written focusing on the gender variable in the drug cases and in the field of sociology of criminal law. In order to answer the research questions by adopting the qualitative research method in the jurisdiction of Kashan city, twenty three cases were studied and had in-depth interviews with nine judges and lawyers in this area. The findings indicate that judges, whether they want to or not, take into account the sex of the criminal in dealing with the drug crimes to apply the institutions of reduction and reduce the punishment for women, which according to the interviewees, could be the physical and mental differences between men and women, placing women in inappropriate situations, the difference in expectations between men and women, as well as the lack of need for strict action to correct female criminals.

Keywords

Woman

Extralegal Variables

Sentencing

Drug Crimes

Criminal Justice System

Subjects