Carlen: class & gender deals - explaining female crime

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  • Carlen: Class & Gender Deals
    • Conducted a study of 39 15-46 year old WC women who had been convicted of a range of crimes
      • 23 were in prison or youth custody at the time of interviews
      • Used unstructured tape-recorded interviews
      • Class deal, women had failed to find a legitimate way of living which left them feeling powerless & oppressed
        • 32 of them had always been in poverty
        • Some found qualifications gained in jail had been no help in gaining work upon release
        • Many had experienced problems & humiliations in trying to claim benefits
      • Gender deal, most of the women had either not had the opportunity to make the deal or saw few rewards & many disadvantages in family life
        • Some had been abused physically or sexually by fathers or partners
        • Over half had spent time in care which broke bonds with family & friends
        • Those leaving or running away from care often found themselves homeless, unemployed or poor
      • Concludes that poverty & being brought up in care/oppressive family were the 2 main causes for their criminality
        • Drug & alcohol addiction & desire for excitement were contributory factors
        • Being criminalised & jailed made class deal even less available to them & made crime more attractive
    • Hirschi's (1969) argues that humans act rationally & are controlled by being offered a 'deal' of rewards in return for conforming to social norms
      • People will turn to crime if they don't believe the rewards will be forthcoming & if rewards of the crime appear greater than the risks
    • Carlen argues WC women are generally led to conform through the promise of two types of rewards:
      • Class Deal - women who work will be offered material rewards, with a decent standard of loving & leisure opportunities
      • Gender Deal - patriarchal ideology promises women material & emotional rewards from family life by conforming to norms of a conventional domestic gender role
      • If these rewards aren't available or worth the effort crime becomes more likely

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