Abstract
Generally, women receive more lenient treatment by the criminal justice system compared to men. Prior research on how gender shaped prosecutorial decision-making and sentencing outcomes has focused on conventional forms of crime, while less is known about how it operates in terrorism-related cases. This is a critical gap in a growing body of research on justice disparities given that women continue to make up a significant portion of terrorism defendants in the U.S. Utilizing data from the American Terrorism Study, we seek to answer how legal and extralegal case attributes of federal terrorism cases vary across gender, how gender shapes federal terrorism case outcomes, and how combinations of relevant case attributes uniquely impact court outcomes for males and females.
Introduction
Women currently represent the fastest-growing population of incarcerated individuals in the United States (Baker & Gau, 2018; Spohn & Beichner, 2000). The increase is likely the result of multiple factors, including a greater focus on a more equal application of the law and a move toward determinate sentencing practices. Despite such changes, previous research has found that women generally receive more lenient treatment by the criminal justice system than men (Felson & Ackerman, 2001; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006; Steffensmeier et al., 1993), suggesting that females may be perceived as less dangerous and less culpable for their crimes compared to men (Bickle & Peterson, 1991). While legal factors like crime seriousness and strength of evidence are associated with harsher punishments (Albonetti, 1987), other research has found that males receive more severe sentences than females (e.g., Steffensmeier et al., 2017), and that this disparity is consistent across other extralegal factors like race and age. At the federal level, Doerner (2012) has found that female defendants have a lower probability of incarceration and are more likely to receive a shorter sentence length. Moreover, research has found that gender impacts the likelihood of pretrial release (Daly, 1987). For example, Demuth and Steffensmeier (2004) found that women are more likely to be released prior to trial, more likely to secure nonfinancial release, and more likely to receive a lower bail amount compared to men.
Prior research has also found that gender-based justice disparities depend on crime type (Auerhahn et al., 2017; Cassidy & Rydberg, 2018; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000; Warren et al., 2012). Yet, little is still known about gendered differences in legal decision-making and court outcomes in the context of serious forms of crime, including terrorism. This is a critical gap in a growing body of criminological research on justice disparities, especially considering that women continue to make up a significant portion of terrorism defendants in the U.S. (Gonzalez-Perez, 2008). Prior research has found that women have participated in political violence for more than a century, including acting in leadership roles within terrorist organizations, and that they continue to be radicalized, engage in violence, and provide material support at similar rates to men across the ideological spectrum (Makin & Hoard, 2014; Raghavan & Balasubramaniyan, 2014; Rosenau, 2020).
The extent to which the findings of prior research on gender-based justice disparities apply to prosecutorial and judicial responses to terrorism remains understudied. Prior research on the adjudication of terrorism defendants has found that prosecutorial decisions about whether to prosecute defendants as terrorists using terrorism-related charges or more conventional charges shapes legal outcomes (Smith & Damphousse, 1996). Yet, whether decisions to adjudicate terrorism-related cases and related sentencing decisions remains unknown. On one hand, it is possible that cultural stereotypes of women as less culpable, less dangerous, and more integral to the well-being of families than their male counterparts result in more lenient treatment of female terrorism defendants compared to men (see Albonetti, 1991; Daly, 1989). On the other hand, it is possible that gender disparities are reduced or even nullified because of the perceived seriousness and premeditated nature of terrorism, such that cultural expectations about female innocence, lowered risk, and traditional roles in society become less relevant to prosecutorial and judicial decision-making.
Furthermore, it is also unlikely the case any single factor, whether gender or other legal or extralegal in nature, alone influences criminal justice outcomes. Instead, it is more likely combinations of these factors that affect prosecutorial and judicial decision-making. Yet, we know little about which combinations or configurations of case-level factors might be prominent and how their prominence might be conditioned by defendant gender. The current study begins to address this question.
Using data from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), the current study seeks to explore gender-based disparities in federal terrorism-related pretrial, prosecutorial, and sentencing decisions. Guided by several theoretical perspectives addressing how social constructs, such as male chivalry, female culpability, femininity, and familial roles shape legal decision-making and outcomes (Chesney-Lind, 1996; Curran, 1983; Steffensmeier et al., 1993), we seek to answer three questions:
How do legal and extralegal case attributes of federal terrorism cases vary across gender?
How do gender and other significant distinguishing case attributes shape federal terrorism case outcomes?
How do combinations of relevant case attributes impact court outcomes for males and females?
Background
Modern jurisprudence dictates that the prosecution and sentencing of defendants should be based solely on the legal factors that are most relevant to the case. Research has found, though, that extralegal variables, such as defendant and victim background, including gender attributes, may significantly impact prosecutorial and judicial decisions (Albonetti, 1998). While it is unlikely that any single theory can account for gender disparities in legal processes and outcomes, prior studies have advanced several possible explanations. In this section, we review some of these explanatory perspectives and their potential relevance for understanding gender differences in legal outcomes for defendants who are federally indicted in terrorism-related cases in the United States. We then review what prior research has found on the influence of extralegal factors, including gender, on prosecutorial and judicial decision-making.
Focal Concerns Theory
Focal concerns theory suggests that court actors who operate with considerable discretion, limited resources, and elevated caseloads must rely on “cognitive shorthands” to process cases as quickly and efficiently as possible (Skolnick, 1966; Steffensmeier, 1980; Steffensmeier et al., 1993). Cognitive shorthands, in part informed by structural inequalities and cultural stereotypes, shape perceptions of blameworthiness, culpability, and potential risks to communities (Steffensmeier, 1980; Steffensmeier et al., 1993, 1998). Blameworthiness refers to a defendant’s culpability and is largely determined by legal factors. For example, offense seriousness and criminal history are commonly used measures of blameworthiness (Holtfreter, 2013). Risk to communities (or “community protection”) refers to the perceived dangerousness of defendants. Measures of community risk include offense type, use of weapon, and education and employment status of defendants (Freiburger & Hilinski, 2010). Another focal concern, practical constraints, consists of the social and organizational costs of incarceration. Concerns of social costs are often tied to views of defendants’ familial responsibilities (e.g., marital status and number of dependents), whereas organizational costs relate to courtroom efficacy (e.g., prison capacity and court case flow) (Freiburger & Hilinski, 2010; Holtfreter, 2013). Studies employing focal concerns theory have routinely found that legal factors like criminal history and crime severity often intersect with extralegal characteristics, such as gender, race, ethnicity, and age of the offender to produce disparate outcomes (Doerner, 2012; Freiburger & Hilinski, 2010; Steffensmeier et al., 2017).
Chivalry Hypothesis
Another explanation for favorable treatment of women in comparison to men regarding sentencing decisions is the “chivalry hypothesis,” rooted in perceptions of traditional gender roles (Doerner & Demuth, 2014; Embry & Lyons, 2012; Farnworth & Teske, Jr, 1995; Rodriguez et al., 2006). The hypothesis purports that women are treated relatively more compassionately by court actors because the criminal justice system (historically composed of men) has a more sympathetic and paternal attitude toward women (Curran, 1983). In this way, female defendants are seen as subservient, fragile, and less in control of their emotions than their male counterparts; therefore, women are less accountable for their actions and less capable of withstanding severe punishment (Chase, 2008; Rodriguez et al., 2006). The concept of chivalry defines behavior for both women and men, creating a power dynamic of male dominance (Moulds, 1978).
In support of the chivalry hypothesis, Nagel and Weitzman (1971) found that females are more likely than males to be released from jail prior to trial, while Spohn (1990) found that females are less likely to be sentenced to prison and to receive an overall shorter minimum sentence compared to males. In another study, Farnworth et al. (1991) found that females are twice as likely as males to receive probation rather than prison. Examining defendants charged with violent felonies, Spohn and Spears (1997) discovered that females are also more likely than males to have all the charges against them dismissed, though this was dependent on the race of the defendant. More recently, the chivalry hypothesis has been adapted to explain variations in gendered responses to crime across crime types. For example, selective chivalry suggests that women are granted leniency only when their crimes are consistent with prescribed gender roles (Meaux et al., 2018). Violent crime, for instance, is thought to be more masculine, and therefore, a woman would be less likely to receive leniency in sentencing.
Double Deviance Theory
Double deviance theory appears to align with the selective chivalry hypothesis by maintaining that women who engage in stereotypically “masculine” crimes (i.e., violent crimes) are considered to be “less feminine,” and thus receive harsher treatment by the criminal justice system (Boritch, 1992; Chesney-Lind, 1996; Rodriguez et al., 2006). That is, they engage in double deviance by breaking the law and violating gender roles associated with femininity (Grabe et al., 2006; Gurian, 2011; Lightowlers, 2019). According to the double deviance theory, women who commit crimes threaten the social order requiring that the criminal justice system response be severe.
Women who diverge from cultural expectations of gender roles are treated more severely by various social institutions. Crawford and Bradley (2016), for example, find that mothers who are perpetrators of physical abuse receive harsher punishments, including a higher risk of losing their children than father perpetrators of physical abuse. Similarly, scholars find that juvenile girls receive harsher punishments for status offenses compared to boys, are more likely to be incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, and are being incarcerated based on their moral well-being (Boritch, 1992; Freiburger & Burke, 2011; Horowitz & Pottieger, 1991).
Prior Research on Prosecutorial and Judicial Decision-Making
Although counter to American ideals of equal justice, the influence of extralegal factors on the decisions of criminal justice actors are well documented (Ahola et al., 2009; Albonetti, 1997; Cramer, 1999; Doerner & Demuth, 2014; Embry & Lyons, 2012; Meaux et al., 2018; Spohn & Beichner, 2000). Systemic, selective enforcement of the law based on extralegal factors has long shaped disparities in decisions about legal processes and outcomes, from granting bail to sentencing. In addition to gender (Doerner, 2012; Freiburger & Hilinski, 2010; Holtfreter, 2013; Rodriguez et al., 2006; Steffensmeier, 1980; Steffensmeier et al., 1993, 2017), extralegal factors such as race and ethnicity (Daly & Tonry, 1997; Demuth, 2002; Kautt & Spohn, 2002; Kramer & Steffensmeir, 1993; Rosich, 2007), age (Steffensmeier et al., 1995), family status (Bickle & Peterson, 1991), education level (Albonetti, 1997), and socioeconomic status (D’Alessio & Stolzenberg, 1993; Lofstrom & Raphael, 2016; Piquero & Davis, 2004; Siegel & Bartollas, 2011) have been shown to impact sentencing outcomes.
Terrorism defendants pose unique challenges for federal prosecutors and judges due to the ways they are unlike traditional defendants. For example, terrorists tend to be older than conventional federal defendants (Corley et al., 2005). Those indicted on federal terrorism-related charges are, on average, between the ages of 35 and 40, whereas non-terrorist defendants in similar cases are between 25 and 44 years of age (Motivans, 2019; Smith & Damphousse, 1996). Smith (1994) and Smith and Damphousse (1996) also find that terrorists receive substantially longer sentences than traditional defendants convicted of similar crimes. Shields et al. (2006) find a significantly larger number of terrorist defendants go to trial and are convicted on their primary charge compared to the general population. In fact, terrorist defendants are almost twice as likely to be convicted at federal trial compared to non-terrorist defendants (Shields et al., 2006).
Understanding how gendered social and cultural expectations shape criminal justice decision-making is crucial for effective counterterrorism efforts (Boritch, 1992; González et al., 2014; Rodriguez et al., 2006). Yet, prior knowledge on terrorism-related case outcomes is largely informed by male terrorist defendants. The nuances of criminal justice system responses to female terrorists remain unexplored. It is possible, for example, that criminal justice actors, including police, prosecutors, and judges, view female offenders largely as accomplices rather than independent actors who are capable of engaging in serious, politically-motivated crime. In fact, prior research indicates that women are rarely viewed or portrayed as the central figure in terroristic violence (Campion, 2020; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2008; Sternadori, 2007). Of the few studies that examine criminal justice responses to women engaged in extremist violence, Makin and Hoard (2014) find women are more likely to be indicted on non-violent offenses than violent offenses. In another study, Alexander and Turkington (2018) find that women are less likely to be convicted and receive more lenient sentences compared to men engaged in terrorism. This study extends this research by investigating how terrorism case outcomes might be influenced by gender in combination with other legal and extralegal factors.
The Current Study
Data on federally indicted male and female terrorists come from the American Terrorism Study (ATS), housed in the Terrorism Research Center (TRC) at the University of Arkansas. The ATS is the longest-running, most comprehensive legal database of federal domestic terrorism in the United States and includes data from terrorism-related federal court records spanning 1980 to present day. Offenders and cases in the ATS either engage in behavior that meets the FBI’s definition of terrorism or appear on official lists of terrorism incidents. Information on terrorism-related incidents is collected and coded from a combination of publicly available federal court records and media sources. For this study, we extracted data on 2,147 total terrorism defendants, including 1,926 male and 221 female defendants.
Description of Variables
Several variables are included in the current study. To begin, gender (0 = female, 1 = male) is included as a key grouping variable by which other legal and extralegal variables are comparatively examined. In addition, four extralegal variables are comparatively examined across gender categories. First, terrorist ideology 1 is measured as environmental (0), extreme far-left (1), extreme far-right (2), and Islamic extremist (3), as well as undetermined ideological affiliation (4). Second, defendant age is coded as age at the time of arrest in connection with the charges based on three categories, including 25 and under (0), 26 to 50 (1), and over 50 (2). Third, level of education is measured based on three categories, including no college experience (1), college graduate (2), and postgraduate education (3). 2 Fourth, the marital/family status of terrorist defendants is dichotomized as non-partnered (0) 3 and partnered (1), including defendants who are cohabitating or engaged to be married.
We also include seven legal measures in our study. First, we measure charge type (count level) as either charges related to conventional but nonviolent crimes (e.g., fraud) (0), conventional but violent or weapons-related crimes (e.g., assault) (1), and charges related to terrorism, hate crime, and national security (e.g., treason, sedition) (2). Second, we measure whether defendants were charged with multiple counts (1) or only a single count (0). Third, we include a measure of politicality, or if (and how) prosecutors choose to explicitly reference defendants’ affiliations to a terrorist movement or group (1) (e.g., charges including material support of terrorism or using weapons of mass destruction) or not (0) during court proceedings. Fourth, a measure of whether defendants were indicted with others (1) or not (0) is included. Fifth, we measure whether defendants were granted bail (1) or not (0). 4 Sixth, a measure of whether a conviction was obtained against the defendant (1) or not (0) is included. Seventh, and finally, we include a measure of the average prison sentence length in months for each terrorist defendant. The maximum sentence length coded here was 2,000 months, including defendants who were sentenced to death or life in prison. 5
Analytical Approach
Bivariate analysis is first conducted to demonstrate the statistical relationships between variables, including gender and dispositional outcomes. Second, we rely on binary logistic regression and negative binomial regression to examine the effects of gender on the three outcomes of interest, net the effects of other legal and extralegal factors. Third, we then supplement this analysis to further explore the similarities and differences in how the attributes of the most (statistically) relevant variables combine in patterned ways. To do so, we rely on the case-oriented, exploratory approach of conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC), or “conjunctive analysis” (see Miethe et al., 2008), which has been increasingly used to study various outcomes in criminology (e.g., Caplan et al., 2017; Rennison & DeKeseredy, 2017). Conjunctive analysis assumes that there may be multiple sets of intersecting causal circumstances associated with probabilistic outcomes, such as legal outcomes in our case, that may be overlooked with traditional variable-centered statistical approaches. Therefore, we rely on conjunctive analysis to explore how particular variables of interest relate to outcomes within the context of other factors that are present. This analytical technique is comparable to other case-oriented approaches, such as qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) (see Ragin, 1987).
To conduct a conjunctive analysis, we first create a truth table, or a data matrix of all possible combinations of variable attributes. The variables included in our conjunctive analysis are gender, ideology, age at arrest, charge type, and if they were indicted with others. In all, there are 180 possible configurations (2 × 5 × 3 × 3 × 2) in our truth table. Strong contextual relationships between variables within all potential amalgamations are indicated by configurations clustering among a smaller number of observed configurations versus the total number of configurations that are possible (Hart et al., 2017). Conjunctive analysis allows for contextualizing the likelihood of an outcome, legal outcomes in our case, based on the presence or absence of one or variables of interest, such as gender.
The number of cases that reflect the combination of attributes comprising a configuration profile is provided as the n per configuration, thereby allowing us to identify dominant or most common configurations. Following recommendations of prior research (Hart, 2014), dominant profiles are those with a minimum number of five cases per configuration. 6 Configurations with less than this number or missing data are removed from the data matrix leaving only dominant, complete profiles to be interpreted. Key to interpreting conjunctive analysis results is the calculated probability of certain outcome attributes, which again include legal outcomes for the current study. We include only variables in our conjunctive analysis that are found to significantly vary across gender. In this way, we utilize conjunctive analysis to explore how each variable of interest combines with other statistically significant variables, also specifically focusing on how dominant configurations vary across the gender of terrorist defendants.
Findings
We begin our discussion of findings by examining differences in several extralegal factors (Table 1). As for defendant age, we find differences nearing statistical significance (p = .052) across gender. Females tend to be slightly older (39 years old) than the average defendant (37). Females indicted in terrorism cases are proportionately more likely to be between the ages of 26 and 50 in comparison to males (70.8% vs. 64.0%), while only approximately 13% of females are 25 and younger (compared to 19.7% of males). Female defendants also tend to be more educated and more likely to be partnered than males, although bivariate analyses did not indicate significant statistical differences in education levels or marital/family status.
Bivariate Results for Extra-Legal Variables by Gender.
We also find that defendants’ ideological affiliations significantly vary across gender. For example, as shown in Table 1, females are proportionately more likely to be affiliated with radical environmentalists than males (17.6% vs. 4.9%) and less likely to be affiliated with Islamic extremism than male defendants (23.5% vs. 39.0%).
We next examine bivariate relationships of several legal factors (see Table 2). Interestingly, we find that conventional, nonviolent charges was the modal charge type for both females (52.7%) and males (37.4%). However, there are significant variations across charge types for males and females, with over half of charges against females referencing conventional, non-violent statutes. Only approximately 16% of females were charged with committing terrorism-specific crimes, while nearly a third of males were charged with such crimes. In addition, Table 2 also reveals no significant differences across gender categories regarding the number of counts or types of charges against defendants.
Bivariate Results for Legal Variables by Gender.
Contrastingly, we find significant differences for the remainder of the legal variables included in our bivariate analysis and gender. Although it is very common for accused terrorists to be indicted with co-conspirators, we find that a relatively higher percentage of females (76.5%) are indicted with others in comparison to males (64.6%).
Especially important to the current study is our finding that females are treated relatively more leniently by the courts. As shown in Table 3, female terrorist defendants are proportionately more likely to receive bail (62.0% vs. 32.8%), less likely to ultimately be convicted (82.7% vs. 87.8%), and, on average, receive less severe average prison sentences (74.8 months vs. 190.3 months).
Bivariate Results for Select Legal and Extra-legal Factors by Legal Outcome Type.
In addition to gender, we found several other key factors varied significantly across legal outcomes. Age varies across some legal outcomes, indicative of an inverse relationship between age and harshness of treatment by the courts. Younger terrorist defendants are less likely to receive bail and receive longer average prison sentences, though age does not significantly vary across the likelihood of conviction. As for ideology, environmental terrorists are treated more leniently than other terrorists in that they are proportionately more likely to receive bail, less likely to be convicted, and receive shorter average sentences. In comparison, extreme far-left, far-right, and radical Islamic terrorists receive bail proportionately less frequently, are convicted relatively more often, and receive longer sentences on average.
Bivariate findings for two measures of prosecutorial decision-making across legal outcomes are also shown in Table 3. Results suggest that when prosecutors explicitly charge defendants on terrorism-related charges, they tend to be treated more harshly by the legal system. Less than 14% of defendants charged with terrorism-related counts are granted bail, approximately 90% are convicted, and these defendants receive longer average sentences than defendants who are accused of committing terrorism-related offenses but who are charged with conventional charges. In addition, findings reveal that defendants who are indicted with co-defendants are relatively more likely to receive bail than those who are adjudicated alone and are less likely to be convicted. In other words, while charging others with co-defendants does not result in leniency in punishment, prosecutorial decisions to try defendants with others results in higher likelihoods of receiving bail and lower chances of being convicted.
Multivariate Findings
The multivariate results shown in Table 4 generally align with bivariate results, especially regarding outcomes of granting bail and length of sentence. As for the effect of gender on court outcomes, results indicate that females are more likely to be granted bail prior to trial in comparison to males and receive more lenient prison sentences, net the effects of other legal and extralegal factors. Gender, however, does not have a significant influence on the likelihood of ultimately being convicted for terrorism-related charges. Multivariate findings for the relationship between age and likelihood of bail being granted also align with bivariate findings. That is, older defendants are more likely to receive bail than the youngest of terrorism defendants, net the effects of other factors. Although bivariate findings did not indicate statistically significant variations in the likelihood of conviction across age categories, multivariate findings do suggest that older defendants in the 26 to 50 age category are significantly less likely to be convicted than the youngest of defendants when other relevant factors are considered. This pattern holds for the oldest of defendants, though only significant at the p ≤ .1 level.
Multivariate Results for Select Legal and Extra-legal Factors by Legal Outcome Type.
In addition, while bivariate findings suggest that older defendants receive significantly lighter sentences, these findings were not significant in the multivariate model. Also shown in Table 4, multivariate findings generally support bivariate results indicating that environmental terrorists, which includes both environmental and animal-rights extremists, are generally treated the most leniently by the courts. In comparison to environmental terrorists, other terrorists are less likely to receive bail, more likely to be convicted, and tend to receive longer prison sentences.
Multivariate findings also suggest that terrorism defendants indicted on both conventional violent charges and terrorism-specific charges are treated more harshly by the courts in comparison to those charged with non-violent, conventional charges. This is not surprising as defendants facing more serious charges related to violent crime, especially when related to alleged acts of terrorism, are less likely to be allowed to return home prior to trial. The likelihood of being sentenced did not significantly differ across charge types, but those charged with committing terrorism-related violent crimes receive longer sentences on average, again with those defendants whose charges are terrorism-specific being sentenced the most harshly. While bivariate findings show that being indicted with others increases the chances of receiving bail, the effect of being indicted with others is not significant in the multivariate model. Being indicted with others does result in a reduced likelihood of being convicted, supporting bivariate results.
Conjunctive Analysis Findings
Traditional statistical approaches aim to identify statistical relationships between variables, like gender and legal outcomes, net the effects of other variables, but such variable-centric approaches reveal less about how gender operates in context with other factors to shape such outcomes. Therefore, we supplement our findings by relying on the analytical approach known as Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations (CACC), or “conjunctive analysis,” to investigate how combinations of legal and extralegal factors, specifically gender, defendant ideology, age at arrest, charge type, and whether defendants were indicted with others, are related to outcomes of interest. Our primary interest is in how the most prominent profiles of case attribute configurations compare across legal outcomes for male and female terrorism defendants.
There are over 100 total attribute configurations from the conjunctive analysis of ATS data. For our purposes, we focus on the six most prevalent case profiles determined to be those representing at least 10 females who fall in a particular configurative category (see Table 5).
Prominent Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations and Legal Outcomes.
The case profiles provide additional context for what can be gleaned from our prior statistical analyses. For instance, Table 5 shows that females had a relatively higher chance of being granted bail relative to males in five of the six prominent configurations. Configurations 1 and 3 indicate gender disparities in bail rates of more than 40% for cases involving individuals between the ages of 26 to 50 who were charged with conventional, non-violent crimes, indicted with others, and affiliated with either extreme far-right or Islamic extremist ideology. Gender disparities in pre-trial releases were much smaller, however, for environmental and left-wing terrorists (Configurations 4–6). The findings shown in Table 5 also reveal that while females are generally more likely to receive pre-trial release than males, this is less the case for females accused of committing violent crimes and crimes involving weapons (Configurations 4–6).
Findings also highlight differences in the likelihood that terrorism defendants are convicted in ways that intersect gender, ideology, and charge type. Radical Islamic extremists (see Configuration 3) are more likely to be convicted on nonviolent charges than extreme far-leftists (Configuration 6) for more serious offenses related to violence and weapons. This consistently higher rate of conviction for radical Islamic extremists in comparison to other ideological groups perhaps reflects a greater perception of seriousness of radical Islamic cases or the complexities and challenges of attaining convictions for more serious charges against left-wing terrorists. Counter to theoretical expectations, we found that female left-wing terrorism defendants (Configuration 6) were more likely to be convicted than their male counterparts when tried with co-defendants. The number of female defendants involved in these cases is small (n = 10), so caution in interpreting these findings is necessary. As shown in Table 5, the two most common case profiles for female defendants (Configurations 1 and 2) are those involving extreme far-rightists charged with co-defendants who are charged with more conventional charges. While being 50 years of age or older for these cases appears to increase the likelihood of conviction, the effect of age is less pronounced for females in these cases. The conjunctive analyses continue to demonstrate that female defendants are less likely to be convicted than males, and reveal that the likelihood of conviction is higher (see Configuration 4) for both male and female environmental terrorists when they are adjudicated alone than when adjudicated with co-defendants (see Configuration 5).
Findings from the conjunctive analysis also suggest that female defendants receive relatively shorter sentences than male defendants for similar types of cases. Focusing on Configurations 1 and 2, there is an unexpected interaction between gender and age for extreme far-rightists who are prosecuted with others on non-violent charges. It seems that older males receive relative leniency in sentencing compared to younger male defendants, while the opposite is true of female terrorism defendants.
When factoring in ideology, we find that Islamic extremists (Configuration 3), both males and females, receive lighter sentences in comparison to extreme far-rightists (Configuration 1) for similar types of conventional, non-violent charges. While the numbers of female defendants are relatively smaller for prominent configurational profiles involving conventional violent and weapons-related charges (Configurations 4–6), the increased severity of sentences for environmental and left-wing female defendants charged in these cases is stark, while the disparities for males in these same comparisons are less pronounced.
Discussion
Terrorism has generally been considered a male-perpetrated phenomenon, even though radical ideologies do not preclude female involvement in terrorism (Banks, 2019; Yon & Milton, 2019), and it is known that females do commit terrorism, though relatively less frequently than males. Much less is known about how females are treated by the courts in comparison to their male counterparts when charged with committing terrorism-related crimes. The purpose of our research was to comparatively examine how court actors respond to female and male defendants indicted in federal terrorism-related cases in the U.S. Our study adds to existing research on criminal justice responses to terrorism by examining how gender, along with other extralegal and legal case attributes, shape the decision-making of court actors. We did not set out to explicitly test any single theory, but instead drew upon the key tenets of focal concerns theory, the chivalry hypothesis, and the double deviance perspectives to shape our initial research expectations and interpretations of findings. Our findings provide some support for the claims of focal concerns theory and the chivalry hypothesis in that female terrorist defendants are more likely to receive bail and shorter sentences than male defendants, perhaps because they are stereotyped by court actors as more fragile, less culpable, and pose less danger to public safety. Conversely, our findings did not reveal harsher punishments for women in bail or sentencing decisions, failing to support the double deviance perspective.
Our study also contributes to the already robust literature on gender disparities in the criminal justice system by being one of the first studies to empirically examine federal court outcomes for female terrorist defendants in comparison to male terrorist defendants. Research has long found that females are generally less likely to receive punitive-oriented criminal justice sanctions than males (Bishop & Frazier, 1992). In particular, women are less likely to be arrested (Felson & Ackerman, 2001), treated more leniently in pre-trial processes (Pinchevsky & Steiner, 2016), less likely to be incarcerated (Steffensmeier et al., 1993; Ulmer & Kramer, 1996), and generally sentenced more leniently in comparison to male offenders (Daly & Bordt, 1995; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006). Importantly, though, research has also suggested that the nature of disparities in criminal justice outcomes also depends on the type of crime (see, e.g., Shermer & Johnson, 2010). Sentencing outcomes for females have been shown to depend on whether crimes are violent or not, and according to how sentencing is measured (e.g., imprisonment versus sentence length) (Rodriguez et al., 2006). For terrorism-related crimes, our study supports the general findings of previous research by revealing that female defendants are treated more leniently during the pre-trial phase, as females are more likely to receive bail and sentenced more leniently than males.
We also contribute to prior research on gender and terrorism by employing both traditional, variable-centered statistical approaches for predicting court outcomes for male and female defendants, but also supplementary, exploratory conjunctive analysis of case configurations. Prior studies of female terrorists have largely been qualitative and internationally-focused. Fortunately, the American Terrorism Study maintains data on 1,000s of federal terrorism defendants over the last several decades, including 100s of female defendants, allowing us to comparatively examine the effects of case attributes on multiple case outcomes. This is the first study to rely on conjunctive analysis to explore how combinations of extralegal and legal variables intersect in ways that are unique for female and male defendants. Conjunctive analysis was used to explore how gender interacted with other variables revealed in bivariate and multivariate analyses to be significantly associated with case outcomes. These analyses not only indicated gender disparities in court outcomes but also in how gender interacts with other relevant factors to shape the decisions of prosecutors and judges. In short, we surmise from these analyses how the degrees of disparities between male and female defendants depend in part on other important legal and extralegal variables like ideology and crime type.
We should note that these additional factors may also be influenced by defendants’ behaviors and the roles they play within terrorist organizations. Research suggests that women play differential levels of leadership and engagement across terrorist ideologies based on the tenets of the movement (Bloom, 2011; Makin & Hoard, 2014; Palmer, 2010). For example, compared to other groups, women in environmental groups may disproportionately engage in extremist crime because environmental groups hold ideological tenets that allow for greater participation of females within their ranks. Conversely, in extreme far-right groups, women may be more likely to participate in secondary or support roles (see Blee, 1996) (e.g., assist with financing, hide weapons or fugitives, or lie to investigators on the group’s behalf) within the context of the group, potentially impacting their ability to engage in the more serious, violent crimes associated with terrorism.
Conclusion
The goal of this research was to compare the criminal justice responses and outcomes of male and female terrorism defendants. In some ways, our research reveals female defendants in terrorism-related cases appear to be treated similarly to their male counterparts. For example, both women and men tend to be charged with conventional, non-violent charges, charged with multiple counts, and roughly the same percentage of males and females are prosecuted in cases where the prosecutor utilizes political rhetoric or charges. Nonetheless, we also find women tend to receive different, and usually more lenient treatment by prosecutors and judges. For instance, female defendants are more likely to be indicted with co-conspirators, more likely to receive bail, less likely to be convicted, and more likely to receive shorter sentences.
While not the focus of the current study, our study also reveals key differences in the correlates and responses to terrorism in the U.S. Specifically, females tend to be slightly older at the time of their arrest and are more likely to be associated with radical environmentalists than any other extremist category. Environmentalists are generally treated more leniently than other terrorist ideologies in their likelihood of receiving bail and sentence length. Also, younger terrorism defendants are treated more harshly than their older counterparts, possibly lending support to the focal concerns tenant of perceived dangerousness. Finally, when prosecutors explicitly charge defendants on terrorism-related charges, they typically received a harsher response by the legal system. While our study fills an important, understudied area of research, one limitation of this analysis is that it does not fully consider the varying roles that women play in terrorism organizations and the degree to which they engage in political violence. Therefore, we suggest that future research should focus attention on the diverse ways women engage in extremist groups and political violence, and how these roles may differ across ideologies.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
