Women and crime

Criminology is a typically androcentric domain created by 19th century 'men of science'.

The majority of research was based around male offenders, and womeen were typically ignored or often steretyped in a negative way in terms of crime.

This is because women are seen as less violent than men, and female offending is often overlooked by society and the police.

Feminist criminology, therefore, developed in the mid-70's to focus on challenging the male dominance within criminology and to put emphasis on female offenders and victims.

Overall, it focused on two main topics: women who commit crimes, and women who are victims of violent crime.

There is no doubt that men commit more crime than women, evident from the currwent prison populartion of roughly 4000 women compared to 81,000 men in the Uk, and the field developed in hopes to understand why peopke commit crime,

Women not only commit lesscrime, but also commit less important and intersting crimes compared to men, so they were mostly ignored in terms of criminology. 

It was Freda Adler and Rita Simon who began the discussion of feminist criminology during the second wave of feminism, when crime rates for women were become to rise.

This is when more research into female offenders began to place to understand why so few eomen committed crime, or from a feminist criminologi al perspective: why so many men commit crime.

Gilfus(1992) found from her study of interviewing incarcerated women, that most had suffered from some form abuse as a child, sexual or otherwise.

This may have been a contributing factor as to why they turned to crime,

Mostly, these women had been jailed for drug possession, prostitution or property theft, and many had ran away from home as children.

Gilfus concluded that due to their broken childhoods, these women found their solace in crime.

Crime for women is seen as a way to escape tragedies they experience as children, particularly those of a lower social status, because it is harder for them to escape the lifestyle in which they were raised.

Mura Hindley, known for her crimes agaisnt children with her infamous partner Ian Brady, is one of the only three female serial killers to ever recieve a life sentence without parole in prison.

Hindley supports Gilfus' findings because as a child she was abused by her father, taught to stand up for herself and was encouraged when she showed violence towards others.

Therefore, Hindley supports the study as she herself turned to a life of crime with her partner. 

Furthermore, Serger and Williams (2003) hypothesises that childhood abuse as the potential to trigger behavioural responses such as running away, which may increase the liklihood of arrest in later life.

They conducted a 20-year longitudinal study focusing on sexually abused girls and non-abused girls.

They found that those with a history of sexual abuse were arrested more frequently for violent than property offences unlike the comparison whereby no difference was found.

As adults, nearly twice as many of the abused groupm and the rate for violent offences was more than two times greater.

Overall, the abused group had been arrested mire times than the non-abused group, more specifically for violent offences, but did include property offences and drug offences.

The number of tried and arrested for their crimes, however, only commit minor crimes such as larceny, drink driving and drug abuse. 

The number of women arrested for drug crimes has doubled since 1986, emphasising the importance of looking at female offending from a criminological perspective.

Therefore, feminist criminology is essential to placing gender at the centre of it's disocurse, and bringing women's waus of understandong the world in terms of crime, criminality and responses to crime.

However, feminist criminology does not purely focus on women and committing crime, it also attempts to draw attention to women who have been victims of crime.

Before the development in the mid-70's, women were largely blamed for being a victim of crime, specifically sexual abuse crimes, inwhich some had to standtrial for being a victim.

Victims previous sexual experiences could be used agaisnt them in court.

However, recent;y, **** shield laws have come into action which have barred the introduction of victims previous sexual relations into evidence.

Feminist criminology has also brought into light that female victims are treated and targeted differently to male victims.

For example, females are more subjected to being targeted by someone close to tgem, like a partner or family member.

Domestic violence is a good example of this, where 1 in 4 females are a victim.

However, despite the advances in feminst criminology, it could be argued that it needs more attention.

In 2016, Amber heard filed for divorse from her husband, Johnny Depp, and provided evidence that he had been domestically abusing her throughout their marraige.

However, there was great controversy over the whole ordeal, and many refused to believe Amber;'s claims.

Cases like this go to show how anyone can be a victim of crime, but it does not mean that just because someone is famous thatr their claim should go ignored.

In conclusion, feminist criminology was developed in an attempt to raise awareness of women's offending and women's victimisation.

Due to the rising crime rate within women, it was time to understand what led women to commit the crimes they do.

For many, it is due to abusive childhood's which has led them to find solace in crime.

Slowly, the field began to grow, and the focus shifted from women who commit crime to women who were victims of crime.

From this, we concluded that women are rarely the victims of stranger violence, and are more likely to be targeted by someone they know.

Overall, the development of feminist criminology is important because we can now understand crime and victimisation from a woman's perspective, rather than the androcentric domian it was when it was originally created.