WOMEN, CRIME, AND DEPENDENCY An Application of the Theory of Law

This article seeks to show how economic dependency, a characteristic which is particularly representative of a woman's location in social life, is related to the outcome of criminal prosecution. A stratified random sample of 1034 cases of women offenders was drawn from the files of on Adult Probation Deportment in northern California. Based on multiple regression analysis, the findings give tentative support to the expectation that sentencing disparities within offense categories can be predicted from the degree to which a woman is economically dependent upon someone else for her day‐to‐day existence: the more dependent she is. the less severe her disposition.