Women convicted for homicide in Mexico City

Abstract

The article provides a brief summary of the results of a comparative study between men and women serving time for homicide in Mexico City, with a particular focus on women inmates. The study included a review of the records of 400 men convicted of homicide, with was 43 per cent of those serving time in Mexico City prisons for such crime. Our sample also comprised the 50 women prisioners in Mexico City convicted of homicide. We enjoyed full access to files regarding the prisoners and conducted in-depth interviews with all of the women in an effort to reconstruct their life stories. We undertook this review in an effort to record the types of homicide most frequently commited by men and contrast those with trends among the women prisoners. We also hoped to determine whether differences existed in the way the system of justice dealt with men and women. In both cases we uncovered relevant information that had not been dealt with in previous Mexican studies, such as the fact that in homicide cases women draw a sentence that is 25 per cent longer than that of their male counterparts in Mexico City.