Between Paternalism and a Gender Perspective: Prosecutorial Decision-Making and Focal Concerns in the Global South

Research has shown that women are treated more leniently than men in the criminal justice system, a finding that is often explained by referencing focal concerns theory and stereotypes related to paternalism and chivalry. For the most part, this research is quantitative, has focused on sentencing, and has been conducted in the Global North. We build on this literature by leveraging qualitative data to examine prosecutors’ gender perceptions and how these perceptions shape early decision-making in the Argentinian criminal justice system. We find concerns consistent with those described in prior research among these prosecutors, who often hold paternalistic and stereotypical views of women as weak, vulnerable, less dangerous than men, and primarily as caregivers. But these stereotypes coexist with prosecutors’ views that women are victims of a paternalistic society and that their prosecution could be experienced as revictimization, an unexplored perspective in case processing research.