"OFFENDING WOMEN": A DOUBLE ENTENDRE

Two of the most significant contributions of feminist criminology since the 1970s are the documentation of (1) the significant amount of violence against women and girls perpetrated by men and boys; and (2) how girls' and women's victimizations and trauma, often at the hands of abusive men...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of criminal law & criminology 2010-06, Vol.100 (3), p.1061-1098
Main Author: BELKNAP, JOANNE
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Correctional institutions
Criminal justice
Criminal punishment
Criminals
Criminology
Domestic violence
Female Offenders
Females
Feminism
Feminist jurisprudence
Government regulation
Imprisonment
Juvenile detention centers
Laws, regulations and rules
Marginality
Norms
Offenders
Offenses
Prisoners
Prisons
Race
THE PEOPLE
Victimization
Victims
Victims of crime
Violence against women
Women
Women criminals
Womens health
Womens health services
Working Women
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Summary:Two of the most significant contributions of feminist criminology since the 1970s are the documentation of (1) the significant amount of violence against women and girls perpetrated by men and boys; and (2) how girls' and women's victimizations and trauma, often at the hands of abusive men, are risk factors for their subsequent offending or labeling as "offenders." On this one-hundredth anniversary of The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Journal), I examined the nineteen articles written about women offenders in the first one hundred years, and in this Article, I summarize and critique the articles and place their findings in the context of current-day scholarship on feminist criminology. Overwhelmingly, these nineteen Journal "historical articles" were written primarily by women in the first three decades of the Journal (1910-1939), and they describe the characteristics of offending women and (speculations about) their offending, the reformatories and prisons in which these women were housed, and the laws regarding and leading to the implementation of women's reformatories. Unlike much of today's work on incarcerated women, these articles rarely consider race or the prisoners' lifetime traumas. When race is considered, it is frequently done so in a racist manner. The women's victimizations, if acknowledged, are typically indicated in a veiled manner. Still, these articles describe women who are highly marginalized by class and the conditions associated with economic marginalization: extremely poor health and very limited education and employment opportunities. At the same time, their survival behaviors, including prostitution, are criminalized alongside other offenses for which men are never incarcerated (such as having sex outside of marriage).
ISSN:0091-4169
2160-0325