Legislative Frameworks for Gender-Sensitive Criminal Justice

Abstract

Criminal justice systems have historically been designed around a male-normative offender profile, producing legal frameworks that inadequately address the differentiated pathways, vulnerabilities, and needs of women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals. Over the past two decades, international instruments such as the UN Bangkok Rules and a growing body of empirical criminology have pushed jurisdictions toward "gender-responsive" and "gender-sensitive" reform. Yet legislative uptake remains uneven, contested, and often reduced to formal gender-neutral drafting that overlooks substantive inequality. This paper synthesizes recent scholarship (2018–2025), alongside foundational earlier work, across four thematic clusters: gender-responsive correctional policy, sentencing and judicial decision-making, intimate partner violence legislation, and the treatment of transgender and non-binary individuals in carceral settings. The review identifies a persistent gap between doctrinal gender-neutrality and substantive gender-responsiveness, limited comparative cross-jurisdictional analysis, and insufficient integration of intersectionality into legislative design. Addressing this gap, the paper proposes a conceptual four-pillar framework — recognition, differentiation, proportional accountability, and institutional capacity — intended to guide legislators and policy analysts in drafting and evaluating gender-sensitive criminal statutes. The paper is conceptual rather than empirical; it does not report new experimental findings but organizes existing evidence into an applied policy framework and proposes a methodology for future comparative legislative analysis. Implications for lawmakers, judicial training bodies, and international agencies are discussed, alongside limitations related to the conceptual nature of the framework and the need for empirical validation across diverse legal traditions.