Gender and Crime (Heidensohn and Silvestri, 2012)

Themes in a feminist critique of criminology

Amnesia/Neglect

• Since women account for only a small proportion of known offenders, less attention is given to them as compared to men

• Major studies and trial programmes are usually targeted at men

Distortion

• Where considered, women are depicted in terms of stereotypes

• Smart (1976): female offenders were viewed as being abnormal deviants

Key issues (Daly and Chesney-Lind, 1988)

• Generalisabiity problem

  • Can theories describing/addressing men’s offending be applied to women?

• Gender ratio problem

  • Why do women commit less crime than men

  • Possibility that women/girls are subject to closer supervision by parents than males?

    • Greater extent of social control results in fewer opportunities to offend

Increasing female crime rates

Offending statistics

• “Theft and handling stolen goods” is the most common offence group for which males and females are prosecuted

  • 44% of females and 28% of males are prosecuted for this category

• Violence against the person is the most common offence for arrests

  • 34% of adult females and 31% of males arrested

  • Girls’ arrest rates for violence increased in the 2000s whilst the BCS showed overall violent crime had fallen

• Women form the majority in a few offences

  • Prostitution, failure to pay for TV licence, children’s truancy

• Women commit fewer crimes (20% of known offenders) and have shorter criminal careers

  • 80% stop offending within a year (compared with 55% of men)

• Gender ratio changed from 7:1 in 1950s to 5:1 in 2000

• Hedderman (2010): changes might be explained by “a change in police behaviour” towards women’s crimes (especially violent offences)

  • Alternatively, the increased proportion of violent crimes might be due not only to increased arrests for such crimes but also decreased overall numbers

  • Sharpe and Gelsthorpe (2009): violent acts form a high proportion of girls’ offences because of “non-participation in other crimes”

• Gelsthorpe (2002): the slight increase in violent/drug crimes is not enough to account for the huge increase in female imprisonment rates

Adler (1975): liberation causes crime

• This view is still very much alive in the media today

  • Concern over “ladettes”, girl gangs, etc.

• Sharpe and Gelsthorpe (2009): shift from a concern over girls’ sexuality to include a concern over the level of violence they are engaged in

Steffensmeier (2006): policy change thesis

• Examining US crime data

• “no meaningful or systematic change in women’s involvement in crimes of interpersonal violence”, statistical changes are due to policy changes “toward enhanced identification and criminalisation of violence in general and of women’s violence in particular”

• Challenged by Lauristen (2009): reached a different conclusion based on the same results

Worall (2004): increased criminalisation of behaviour

• “welfarisation” and “soft policing” means that behaviour which used to be subject to social control mechanisms is now treated as being criminal

• Recorded increases of violent offending are usually in relation to minor forms of offending not involving weapons

  • Most of the victims are care workers or police officers: behaviour which might have previously been treated as a welfare issue

Burman and Batchelor (2009): increased politicisation of youth crime

• “what we are witnessing is not an increase in violent offending per se, but the increased reporting, recording and prosecuting of young women accused of violent offences”

• The resulting change of system responses might increase policing of girls’ behaviour

  • Resulting in a self-fulfilling prophesy (Steffensmeier 2009)

Gender and Policing

Entry of women into policing was a result of first wave feminism

• Carrier (1988): seen as a means of offering protection to female and juvenile offenders and victims who would be neglected by an all-male force

• In 2010, 26% of the police force in England and Wales was female

• In 1995, Britain appointed its first female chief constable

Remnant discrimination

• Heidensohn (2000): evidence of “macho cop culture, manifested in sexual discrimination and sexual harassment of women officers by their male colleagues”

• Loftus (2008): despite increased representation and support for women and minorities, there is still discrimination present

  • Since the “white, heterosexual male” majority viewed the emphasis on diversity as “excessive and unwarranted”

Men and crime

Connell (1995): framework of assessing masculinity

• There are complex and multiple masculinities

  • Hegemonic masculinities: associated with heterosexuality and toughness

  • Subordinated masculinities: associated with homosexuality and other traits

• Masculinities can change over time and place and can be adopted even by women

Messerschmidt (1993): gender as a “situational accomplishment”

• Marginalised groups search for other ways to assert their masculinity via crime

• Crime is a means of “doing gender”

Hall and Winlow (2005): competitive individualism and instrumentality

• Rising crime and violence amongst working class men is a result of the need to satisfy ambitions and desires

• Psychosocial framework: actions are guided by an attempt to deal with their own past experiences and failures

Sentencing of women

Chivalry/Leniency

• Allen (1987): violent women offenders received more sympathetic and individualised justice for serious crimes

• Hood (1992): women less likely to receive custodial sentences

• Not widely accepted: sentencing trends are more complicated than this

• Daly (1994): in the USA, children were the recipients of “judicial paternalism” rather than the women themselves

  • Men and women were generally sentenced similarly for like crimes

Enforcing stereotypes

• Worrall (2004): female offenders are seen as “perversions of normal femininity”

• Eaton (1986): men and women who conformed to conventional roles were treated better than those who didn’t (e.g. homosexuals or single mothers)

• Edwards (1984):...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Criminology Notes.