Women who commit crimes

In seventh grade, my two friends and I were detained by mall security for stealing a $4.50 pair of earrings from the Limited.\nI had over 20 dollars in my pocket at the time and I was at the lucky age when my parents thought it was "cute" that I liked to go to the mall with my other friends, with our newly pierced ears and budding interests in the opposite sex. I had no reason to steal.\nIt just seemed so easy and so cool, so I did it that once and after a talk with a counselor at the jailhouse, whose name my mom still yells at me when I am in trouble so many years later, the crime was completed. Restitution was made to the Limited in the form of the returned, unworn rhinestone hoop earrings.\nStatistically, women don't make good criminals. In the U.S., according to Newsweek, women only commit two crimes as frequently as men: shoplifting and the murder of their own children.\nWhile my crime certainly pales in comparison to Andrea Yates', the Houston mom who killed all of her children in the order from youngest to oldest; it is both amazing and disgusting that the most common crime among mothers is the murder of their children.\nWomen commit less than 13 percent of all of the violent crimes in the United States. Yet, according to MSNBC, they compose 50 percent of all of the murders of parent to child.\nMental insanity is the most common defense. While I do advocate everyone seeking mental counseling, I don't buy it as an excuse for disgusting actions. Like many other problems that vary in severity, I think that it goes back to personal responsibility.\nAfter deliberating for only 35 minutes Yates' jury found her guilty of drowning her five children, sparing her immediate death in the death penalty's capital (Texas). Yates received only a life sentence, one that her clearly pathetic husband, Russell, called "a breakdown of the medical and judicial system."\nHer husband blames the medical system he placed her in after the birth of their first child. Diagnosed with postpartum depression at the time, doctors told her not to have any more children. She would produce four more. \nIn a scary chain of severe depression and mental illness, her husband continues to point fingers at the medical personnel who assessed her, claiming that their improper diagnosis of the severity of his wife's mental illness ultimately led to the death of his children. \nHer life sentence is a tragedy, he claimed, if only 6-month-old Mary could be alive to hear her daddy say such a thing.\n What is scary about this defense, whether Yates received a proper diagnosis or not, is that once again it takes the blame of the crime away from the criminal and into the hands of people who possibly "should have" been more aware, more helpful and more thorough.\n Doctors in Houston should not be held liable for determining that a mother would eventually drown her children and lay them on a bed from shortest to tallest. \nEven the most reputable psychiatrist shouldn't be held liable for predicting the possibility of such a grotesque action.\nSociety should place more responsibility on the criminal. While there are mental instabilities and other medical issues that should be addressed and diagnosed, these diseases are not viable excuses.\nAs difficult as it may be, it is just that simple.