Media Perception and Correctional Centre’s Portrayal of Female Offenders in Nigeria

Abstract

Female offending has become one of the topical issues in the Nigerian mass media. It is not news that females are engaged in crimes even though they are often perceived as harmless, meek, weak and in need of protection. The way female offenders are portrayed in the mass media in Nigeria and elsewhere should be of concern to feminist criminologists, media sociologists and development scholars. This issue has hardly received scholarly attention. Both males and females share the propensity to commit crime regardless of the gender differences. Available literature and statistics indicate that they are both actively involved in crime and the frequency of committal by the males is more than the females. Deploying the feminist theory as its theoretical parameter, this longitudinal study examined the portrayal of female offenders in the mass media in Nigeria. The study heavily relied on secondary sources of data collection from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), print and electronic media and academic journals. Data was analyzed based on content analysis. The results indicated that though females are in all the categories of offences but their numbers are almost insignificant compared to that of the males. It further established that the highest percentage differences in male and female offending is not more than 6.4% for the females and 93.7% for the males from all the categories of offences analyzed within a period of 6 years in Nigeria (2010-2016). The study, therefore, recommended, among others, that the mass media presentation of offences should be devoid of biased gender reporting.