Under Pressure: Women Who Plead Guilty to Crimes They Have Not Committed

Gender-specific qualities make women more likely than men to admit to crimes that they did not commit. Though promises of lesser charges, shorter sentences, and other incentives prompt both men and women to make false admissions, the piece contends that women are less able to bargain and more willing to plead guilty. To understand the factors that fuel this phenomenon, the authors of this study relied upon prevailing literature and their own semi-structured interviews of fifty adult women sentenced in an English prison. Scholars such as Figueira-McDonough suggest that women admit guilt more frequently than men because they have committed crimes that are both less serious and more-quickly dispensed by the judicial system. An Icelandic study of 212 men and 212 women who responded to a questionnaire measuring degrees of conformity to authority demonstrated that women exhibit much lower self-esteem and much higher compliance than men. The authors’ interviews also illustrated the unique stresses that women face. Women feel pressured to make false confessions because of their responsibilities to their children and husbands; as primary caregivers, women suffer considerable stress when separated from their families. Female defendants feel as though they are being both tried in court for the crime allegedly committed and judged out of court for failing to satisfy the notion of “proper womanhood.” Some reported having been coerced into confessing to the crimes committed by their male partners, while others did so voluntarily to protect their associates and thus “stand by [their] man.”

“[W]hereas men’s moral judgments are founded on ideas of individual rights and abstract notions of right and wrong, women’s moral reasoning is more contextual and based on the importance of human relationships and an imperative to ensure that the needs of others transcend their own.” p. 85