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Ella MacCallum SOC205_01 Prof. Gjika September 27th, 2020

Crime: Gender Roles in Crime and Punishment as Proven by I am a Killer

“It’s not fair that Robby is not here. He was only 25 and he had his whole life ahead of him. But I made the choice. I took his life, and there’s nothing I can do to undo it.” This is the opening line of the episode In Her Hands from the docu-series, I am a Killer. I chose this episode specifically because, unlike the majority of episodes in this series, this one focused on a woman. It was obviously not coincidental that the producers decided to make the first statistic shown in this episode that “of 8,000 people convicted of murder, fewer than 10% of those people were women.” When thinking about someone who would commit such a heinous crime, you would think of a man. Specifically, a big, dangerous looking man. The murderer in this episode, Lindsay Haugen, was the opposite. She was small, smiley, and very innocent looking. If you saw her on the street, you would not assume that she would be the type to commit murder, but she was still capable of killing a man with her bare hands. What mattered at the end was how she was depicted in this episode in comparison to the typical male criminal. Women are generally seen as the gentler sex. We are more likely to be depicted as the weaker one in a duo with a man and a woman. While usually a criminal is depicted as almost evil, with no emotions and sociopathic tendencies, the episode chose to depict Lindsay in a more motherly, weak way. Lindsay’s testimony focused around how she felt that the crime she committed was a mercy killing. She claimed that her boyfriend, Robby, wanted to die and that she was doing him a favor. She went into detail about

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the things that he would say to her, the gestures that he would make, and the many times that she volunteered to kill him but couldn’t because she didn’t want to hurt him. The shots that were chosen for the episode of her close up interview, her interrogation, and the first time coming face to face with his family were all tear-filled and emotional. She continuously broke down while trying to tell the story of how she killed him. She even claimed that at one point she tried to revive him because she realized when he was dead already that she couldn’t go through with it. Due to this concept that women are more emotional and more in touch with their humanity than men are, it makes sense that the episode would choose to put in clips where she was more emotional and felt more remorse for her actions. Since women are less likely to commit murder, seeing a woman in an episode of a show that centers itself around just that is shocking on its own. If the viewers of this episode saw her as sociopathic, in the way that most male murderers are depicted, they might be more shocked. While men’s actions are not thought into nearly as much when they are convicted of a crime like murder, women are seen as monsters when they commit a crime against a boyfriend, husband or child. Our role in society is to play the nice one, the innocent one, and the motherly one, so in order to keep that role in the back of the viewers’ mind, it seems as if those scenes were chosen to make her less of a monster. Men are expected to not show emotion when in a situation like the one in I am a Killer, while women are expected to show as much as possible so that their standard from society isn’t completely damaged. Taking into consideration the standard of women vs. men in crimes, we can even go into the difference in punishment expectation. The second half of the episode depicts Lindsay and her prison life. At this point she has been in prison for five years, and the episode showed a drastic change in attitude since the moment she stepped into the interrogation room. Lindsay was given a sixty year sentence for the murder of Robby Mast, but instead of depicting her as sitting around miserable, thinking about her actions the way that a man might be portrayed to be doing, Lindsay was shown to have a smile on her face, strumming her guitar and singing religious songs with none other than the mother of the murdered man.

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When taking this into consideration, we can then assume that in the same way that women are depicted to be more emotional and remorseful when receiving the conviction from the judge, women are also expected to show growth and positivity in a situation like prison. A man and a woman might receive the same sentence, but if you watch any crime show where a man is convicted of murdering anyone, the end result is always him sitting in a lonely cell with a frown on his face or a blank stare, while he contemplates the rest of his life in prison. However, Lindsay was shown walking around the correctional facility in no handcuffs, smiling and, again, finding things she loves to do like sing and play guitar. Due to this, those watching would have to assume that Lindsay was taking the time to grow while in prison in order to return to society one day a better woman who takes responsibility and genuinely would never hurt anyone again. To bring up a side point, it is also shown in the episode that Robby’s mother and stepfather were able to forgive Lindsay for what she did. This is another point that I started to question whether or not the interaction would have been different if the perpetrator was a man. Like I said earlier, Lindsay shed a lot of tears when first coming face to face with Robby’s mother and stepfather. There was a lot of sadness and guilt shown on her face, which was enough for Robby’s mother to hug her and forgive her for what she did. Lindsay playing the part of the remorseful woman and showing the sadness and regret on her face and in her body language was enough for forgiveness. Would a man, who is trained to show no emotion and remorse for committing such an act, receive the same kind of treatment? Men in general are taught from a young age to “man up” and “act tough”. This gives them a disadvantage in the punishment aspect of the crime that they commit. For a woman, like Lindsay, it’s easy to either pretend or show genuine emotion when coming to terms with a crime, but for any man who’s facing jail time for a murder, it’s easier for them to do what they’re taught from a young age and stay stoic in situations like this. In that case, would it be harder for Robby’s mother to believe that the perpetrator actually does regret committing a crime? Would the man get a hug and an “I forgive you” in the way that Lindsay did? It’s not

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just legal punishment that would differ between the two genders, it’s emotional punishment as well. Men would have to come to terms themselves, in their own head, that what they did was wrong, and would have a hard time peacefully knowing that they are forgiven for what they did, while a woman like Lindsay can easily get through both her legal and emotional punishment, knowing that the parents see her grief and emotion clearly and knowing that they can openly forgive her for it. Punishment is there to prevent future crime, yes, but each gender sees that differently. For a woman, it’s reform and knowing that she is forgiven. For a man, on the other hand, it’s seeing the problem in what he did and paying for it. Finally, after looking at some of the definitions of crime that we talked about in class, I think that this episode revealed that though crime can be a literal legal violation, there is more of a power conflict between the two genders than I originally thought. At the end of the day, murder is murder. It’s one of the most horrible crimes that can be committed and is worthy of a punishment as long as Lindsay’s. However, when thinking about the difference in gender treatment, and the way that criminals are portrayed based on gender, the definition of crime can be thought about a little bit more. I think it’s safe to say that this episode proves that the emotional complex of a woman has more power over the way that the criminal justice system sees an emotionless man. Lindsay’s constant show of emotion, remorse, and tears in the clips that formed the episode show that the criminal justice system would rather see a woman as a softer criminal. With that softness comes a softer response. The response Lindsay got from the camera crew, the detectives, and even the family of the man she killed with her bare hands shows that society is convinced that even a dangerous woman is not that dangerous. Society would rather see that a woman is still capable of changing and reforming into that soft being that a woman is supposed to be than see her face what she did and pay for it. A man, on the other hand, faces a different type of crime. Not only does he face the legal crime, he faces the crime of forever being a dangerous person. That is a crime within another crime. He will forever walk the streets known as a sociopath and a criminal. Criminal law is not neutral, it will always punish based on what society wants. Society wants a woman like Lindsay to show that she is truly

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sorry and emotional about the crime that she committed, and society wants a man to be emotionless and to show that he will spend the rest of his life rotting in a cell for what he did. We know then, as a result, Lindsay will never get treated even remotely close to the way a man would be treated....