Feminist Perspective on the Victimization of Women in Criminology: A Historical Overview, Study notes of Criminology

Download Feminist Perspective on the Victimization of Women in Criminology: A Historical Overview and more Study notes Criminology in PDF only on Docsity! 1 | P a g e Explain and assess the thesis developed in feminist criminology that ‘classical’ criminology has contributed to the victimisation of women. Introduction. Subject of criminology. What is feminist criminology? Criminology studies crime and justice system applied to crime, and covers a variety of topics related to these general subjects. Feminist criminology, which started to develop on the second wave of feminism, in the 1960-70s, argues that the classical criminology was developed from the studies of male criminality, validated on male subjects, and studies the victimisation of males. The feministic theories demonstrate that ignorance of the gender question in classical criminology influenced the sentencing and punishing of women and contributed to victimization of women. Feminist criminology suggests some practical approaches to solve the existing gender-related problems in criminal justice system. Early theories of female criminality. Mainstream criminology, for very long time, had almost nothing to say of interest or importance about women. The ignorance of classical criminology towards female offenders can be considered as rather natural reaction to the well established fact that women are rarely involved in crime. The statistics convincingly demonstrates that females are much less likely to be involved in violent crime, and very unlikely to become the repetitive offenders ("gender ratio" phenomenon). Since this is the case, the studies of women in criminology were considered inherently less interesting and less important. In seemed more relevant to understand how to control the criminal behaviour of man. Feminists believe, however, that the latter explanation deals mostly with males stereotypes. It really become obvious that they have to be right when we try to ask a simple question: Why, instead of scrutinising the connection between "maleness" and crime, all classical criminologists were always trying to answer the question of why women don't offend, as if criminogenic properties of males are perfectly normal. For many decades it was believed that the low crime rate among women comes from natural biological trait of "passivity", and female offenders were often considered mentally ill. Most of the older criminological texts either don't mention women or consider them in the same group as juveniles or insane. Smart (1976) argues that this neglect was a reflection of woman's 2 | P a g e position in the society. In criminology, like in the society in general, man was a central figure and woman was his compliment. Women were often defined as different, and inferior, to man and this resulted in denial of some basic rights and access to resources for them. Victorian science viewed women as a developmental anomaly. Ultimate stage of the evolutionary development was white Caucasian male. Women, being less developed, stop growing sooner and at best can be considered as trapped in puberty (Walklate, 2004). If usual woman suffers from arrested development, than criminal woman must be a particularly problematic being. This was a conclusion reached by Cesare Lombroso who wrote in 1903 that female criminals were more rare and showed some signs of degeneration because women are less evolved than men as a result of inactive nature of women's lives. He believed that due to females passivity they simply lack the intelligence and initiative to become criminals. Sigmund Freud theorised in his 1914 book "On Narcissism" that women have the penis envy and try to compensate for this inferiority complex by being narcissistic and exhibitionistic. William Thomas in his "Unadjusted Girl" (1923) argues that woman has a greater ability to love than man and suffer more from not receiving social approval and affection. Female offenders ("unadjusted girls") use their sexuality in socially unacceptable ways to get what they want from life. For long time the society treated woman in accordance with the inflexible standards of femininity. In 1961, Pollac argued that men were socialised to treat women in fatherly way, and therefore the courts were inhibited by notion of chivalry when applying justice for women. As a result, the female crime has been vastly underestimated. The women were protected: their crimes were less likely to be detected or harshly prosecuted. Pollac wrote that women are more devious than men: "for women deceit is a socially prescribed form of behaviour" (Pollac, 1961). Another theory developed in the middle of 20th century, the Strain theory, postulates that social structure within the society can encourage people to commit crime. When women commit crime, it's viewed as some sort of "weakness". The critics of strain theory (e.g. Naffine,1987) points out, that in this theory female is characterised merely as a facilitator of crime, "helpmate". These views on female criminality, based on derogative views of women in general, were prevailing for surprisingly long time. For instance, the Neo- Lombrosian studies of 1980s were still considering prostitution as evidence of individual psychopathology rather than a rational economic choice for women (McLeod, 1982). 5 | P a g e latter points out that much of the women’s victimization occurs at home and, consequently, is hidden from view. Police receives well above half a million calls each year in connection with domestic violence. 77% of cases involved female victims and male perpetrators (Crime in England and Wales, p.56). In relation to sexual assaults women are clearly at higher risk than men. Almost one-quarter of women report having experienced sexual assaults. Among victims of intimate violence, the most serious violence is more likely to be committed by partners rather than strangers. Last decades have seen a huge increase in the awareness of the way the criminal justice system deals with sexual violence against women. It has been argued that in a relatively recent past the attitude of the system to women’s complains amounted to ‘secondary victimization’: police were often unsympathetic, and the traditional advices for avoiding the risk of sexual attacks were those of the “Don’t do this and that” variety. Women failing to follow these advices were often considered negligent and contributed to their own victimization. The things have changed significantly in recent years. Metropolitan Police has established a dedicated Domestic Violence Unit, and the 2004 Domestic Violence, Crime and Victim Act further extended police power in dealing with this type of offences. The changes have affected the whole criminal justice system, not only police. But, as Heidensohn concludes, ‘police and policing remain gendered in the 21stcentury. The macho culture is still alive in some forces even now, although it is also a source of embarassment’. Another question that kept feminist scholars worrying for long time is the disproportionality of punishment the women receive. In particularly, many authors were questioning the need to imprison women for relatively minor offences. Women make up a very small (although fast rising in recent years) minority of the prison population (5.4% in 2007). The increase in the proportion of female prisoners observed since 1992 is likely to suggest that sentencing has simply got more severe in recent years (Hedderman, 2004). A report by Baroness Jean Corston on women's vulnerability in criminal justice system (2007) concludes that prison is disproportionately harsher for women because prisons have for the most part been designed for men. It calls for the distinct, radically different, holistic and women-centred approach to treating female offenders. When it comes to punishment and imprisonment, the equal treatment of men and women does not result in equal outcomes. For example, mental health problems are far more prevalent among women in prison than in the male prison population or in the general population (women in prisons are five times more likely to have the mental health concerns than women in general population). Self-harm in prison is more common among women. Women 6 | P a g e prisoners are much more likely than man to be the primary carers of young children, which makes their prison experience much more difficult. Finally, because of the small number of women’s prisons, women tend to be located further away from their homes, which makes it difficult to maintain their family ties, receive visits and resettle back into the community. The continued imprisonment of female offenders appears to have no advantage to the society at huge financial and social cost. Each prison place costs approximately £77,000 per year, but this number has to be topped with indirect cost of family disruption, damage to children and substitute care, lost employment and mental health problems, and all these problems are particularly obvious when we talk about imprisonment of women. Short-term sentences for very minor offences seem to be in particular meaningless since they bring chaos and disruption to the families and don't address the cause of crime. Corston Report (2007) suggests to substitute women prisons by small multi- functional custodial centres. It recommends to use the community sentencing options for women as a norm, preserving custodial sentences for serious and violent offenders posing threat to public. As such, the suggestion is not new and was often scrutinised in the literature (see, for instance, the book of Chesney-Lind and Pasko (2004)). It is probably about time to check how this is going to work in practice. Conclusions Undeniably, the feminist contribution has changed significantly the nature of criminological thought in recent years, and criminology is not gender-blind anymore. It has questioned and/or displaced some previous theories of criminalisation and suggested new lines of investigation. “Naming the type and dimension of female victimization has a significant impact on public policy, and it is arguably the most tangible accomplishment of both feminist criminology and grassroots feminists concerned about gender, crime, and justice” (Chesney-Lind, 2006). The need for a distinct approach in treating men and women by criminal justice system is now very obvious, and practical steps in this direction are currently being undertaken. It remains to be seen how successful this approach will be and how it will improve the current situation with victimization of women. 7 | P a g e References: Adler, F. (1975) Sisters in crime. McGraw-Hill, New York. Crime in England and Wales 2008/9, Volume 1, Findings from the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime, Home Office Statistical Bulletin, July 2009 http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109vol1.pdf Downes, D. and Rock, P. (2007) Understanding deviance. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Carlen, P. (1988) Women, crime and poverty. Open University Press. Milton Keynes, Philadelphia. Chesney-Lind, M. (1988) Girls in jail. Crime & Deliquency 34, 150-168. Chesney-Lind, M. (2006). Patriarchy, crime, and justice: Feminist criminology in an era of backlash. Feminist Criminology 1, 6-26. Chesney-Lind, M. and Pasko, L. (2004) The female offender. Girls, Women, and Crime. 2nd Edition. Sage Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, California. The Corston Report. Executive summary (2007) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/corston-report/corston-exec- summary?view=Binary Hedderman, C. and Hough, M. (1994) Does the criminal justice system treat men and women differently? Home Office Research Findings, no. 10 http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r10.pdf Hedderman, C (2004) Why are more women being sentenced to custody? in Women who offend, edited by G. McIvor. Jessica Kingsley, London. Heidensohn, F. (1996) Women and Crime. 2nd Edition, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke. McLeod, E. (1982) Women working: prostitution now. Croom Helm, London. Naffine, N. (1987). Female Crime: The Construction of Women in Criminology. Allen and Unwin, Boston Pollac, O. (1961) The criminality of women. A.S.Barnes, New York.