Rikosoikeuspolitiikka ja sukupuoli

Abstract

<p>The implementation of a policy for equality can either take the form of special programmes or<br />mainstreaming. In the Finnish criminal policy, gender has mostly been invisible, but a<br />national programme to combat violent crime, published in the spring of 2005, identified<br />violence against women as a special problem and proposed special measures to address it.<br />While the programme referred to alcohol and social exclusion as the general explanations for<br />violent criminality, it did not raise the idea of mainstreaming of gender issues.<br />The article analyses three legal reforms: the reform of assault (battery) in 1995, the reform<br />of prosecution rules in cases of violent crime in 1995, and the introduction of an Act on the<br />Restraining Order in 1999. While the issue of gender was invisible in the first two reforms,<br />the third reform was a special measure to combat violence against women. The first two<br />reforms have resulted in more lenient prosecution and sanctions for violent crime, and for<br />violence against women in particular. The enactment of the restraining order created a special<br />procedure to address this kind of violence, instead of resorting to ordinary criminal<br />procedures. The main conclusion is that the incorporation of sex and gender into the legal<br />reforms requires both awareness and gender expertise, because the implications of sex and<br />gender are not always as axiomatic as one might expect.<br /></p>