Gender Role of Incongruence and the Adjudication of Criminal Responsibility.

The mental health and criminal justice systems are two of the major control mechanisms in American society that often function together through related and interdependent structures to identify and control deviant behavior. Both systems employ coercive control. In addition, regardless of the specific form of the deviance, these control institutions also use informal social control to reinforce role behaviors appropriate to the individual’s age, sex, race/ethnicity, and other social statuses. This paper investigates the effects of gender and gender role incongruence on the determination of criminal responsibility. Data for this study came from the Insanity Defense Reform Project, a National Institute of Mental Health-funded study of eight states. The sample for this study consists of 4842 cases in which insanity was raised as a defense. Consistent with earlier studies, women are more likely to be found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) than men, but the odds of being found NGRI are moderated by the defendant’s sex and relationship to the victim. Consistent with hypotheses of the effects of gender role incongruence, women whose victims are their own children or other family members (not including spouse victims) have the greatest odds of being found NGRI of any group. However, women whose victims are spouses have similar odds of being found NGRI as those of men whose spouses are the victims. Thus, the theory was only partially supported, suggesting that how and the degree to which courtroom personnel rely on common stereotypes and gender expectations in decision making is complicated and may reflect a weighing of factors related to blameworthiness and dangerousness—both physical and symbolic. * School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University—Newark. VEYSEY 6/16/2015 9:18 PM 1088 Albany Law Review [Vol. 78.3