Myrna Dawson, an associate sociology professor at the University of Guelph, has studied what happens to men who kill women family members and found that they receive shorter prison sentences compared with men who kill strangers. She calls this an “intimacy discount.” Reasons why this is the case include the notion that men are provoked into spontaneous violence, a “crime of passion” defense. Dawson, however, also describes that what the leniency may reflect is that, across the criminal justice system, “women murdered by male partners are seen as property.” Property can’t fight back.
