Historically, there has been debate in scholarship concerning gendered sentencing disparities for individuals convicted of sexual offending. Using sentencing data from 2012-2017, this project aimed to determine whether sentencing disparities exist between females who perpetrate sexual offences and males who perpetrate sexual offences in Queensland.

Impact

Sentencing decisions are important as a deterrence measure and for ensuring access for all individuals to appropriate assessment and intervention programs to address these behaviours and reduce reoffence risk. Extending the NZ study to Australia produced the largest comparative sample of male- and female-perpetrated sentencing data in Australasia and allows for cross-cultural comparisons. This project also strengthened an existing international and interdisciplinary collaboration between UniSC researchers in criminology and justice, and law, with NZ researchers in psychology (University of Otago).