Feminist Theories of Crime

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Feminist Theories of Crime

• Girls, Women, and Crime

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(No Transcript)
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Shaw and McKay's Model
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Sampson and Grove (1989)
Residential Mobility Low Economic Status Racial
Heterogeneity Family Disruption Population
Density/Urbanization
Unsupervised teen-age peer groups Low
organizational participation Spare local
friendship networks
Crime
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Violent crimes included are homicide, rape,
robbery, and both simple and aggravated assault.
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Males were almost 10 times more likely than
females to commit murder in 2005.The offending
rates for females declined since the early 1980's
but stabilized after 1999.
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Dominant theories of crime

• Rational Choice theory
• Deterrence theory
• Social Learning Theory
• Social Bond Theory
• Self-Control Theory
• Labeling Theory
• Social Disorganization
• Mertons Theory

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Feminist Theories

• Criminology has been dominated by males (field is
  flawed by the masculine perspective)
• Two main issues for Feminist theories of crime
  are Do the theories of mens crime apply to
  women? and Can the theory explain the well
  known gender difference in crime?

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Women and crime

• Womens crime was virtually overlooked
• Female victimization was ignored or minimized
• Feminist criminology demonstrates how gender
  matters not only in terms of ones trajectory
  into crime but also in terms of how the criminal
  justice system responds to the women-offenders

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Background Information is important

• A few facts about the lives of adult women in
  U.S. prisons
• 60 of women under correctional authority
  reported that they have been sexually and
  physically assaulted at some time in their lives
• 69 of these women reported the assault happened
  before they were 18 years old

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National Study

• In 1990, the American Correctional Association
  published the results from a survey it conducted
  on female offenders Based on the responses of
  female offenders in 400 state and local
  correctional facilities, a very detailed profile
  of the female offender was produced

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Profile

• Most are young (25-29)
• The majority are economically disadvantage
  minorities with children
• About half ran away from home as youths
• About a quarter had attempted suicide
• A sizable number had serious drug problems
• More than half were victims of physical
  abuse/sexual abuse
• About a third had never completed high school
• Over a quarter had been unemployed in the three
  years before going to prison
• Most of the women were first imprisoned for
  larceny, theft, or drug offenses, and, at the
  time of the survey, they were serving time for
  drug offenses, murder, larceny, theft, or robbery
  
• Many of the women convicted of manslaughter or
  murder had killed a boyfriend or husband who
  abused them

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Homicides committed by women

• Female-perpetrated homicides account for 10-12
  of the overall homicides
• Who do women kill?
• The answer is those closest to them, with whom
  they live (intimate partners, or ex-partners and
  family members)
• Over the period 1995-2001, intimate partners
  accounted for 32 of female-perpetrated homicides

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Method of killing

• Women usually kill their partner with a knife or
  sharp instrument (78)
• Poisoning (6.2)
• Blunt instrument (2.6)
• Arson (2.2)
• Shooting (2.0)

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Weapon use in Murder

• A firearm (handgun) is used in about two-thirds
  of all homicides (predominantly males)
• Knives or other cutting instruments
  (predominantly females)
• Personal weapons (hands, fists, and feet)
• Blunt objects
• Strangulation

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Offender characteristics

• Typical intimate partner killer is one aged b/w
  25 and 40, with below-average level of
  educational attainment, who is likely to
  unemployed and from lower-class background (Mann,
  1996, Goetting, 1987)

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Explanations of Intimate Partner Homicide

• Battered Woman Syndrome (Walker, 1989) (women
  who have been physically, psychologically, or
  sexually abused over an extended period of time)
• Financial gain (financial benefit from the death
  of partner)
• Sexual Motivation (establish legal relationship
  with another party)

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Invisible women

• Every year, girls account for over a quarter of
  all arrests of young people in America (FBI,
  2002, p.239)
• Despite this, the young women who find themselves
  in the juvenile justice system either by formal
  arrest or referral are almost completely
  invisible
• Explanations for their delinquency explicitly or
  implicitly avoid addressing girls

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Liberal feminism

• Liberation perspective
• Greater equality in education, politics, economy,
  and military
• An unintended consequence of this availability to
  women of a wider range of social roles is their
  greater involvement in crime (arena dominated by
  men)

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Power-Control Theory of Gender and Delinquency

• John Hagan, 1987
• The theory explains the difference between male
  and female rates of delinquency
• Two types of family structures (Patriarchal
  families vs egalitarian families)

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Patriarchal family

• Fathers occupy the traditional role of sole
  breadwinner and mothers have only menial jobs or
  remain at home to handle domestic affairs
• Fathers focus is directed outward towards his
  instrumental responsibilities, while the mother
  is left in charge of the children, especially
  their daughters
• Sons are granted greater freedom as they are
  prepared for the traditional male role symbolized
  by their fathers
• Daughters are socialized into the cult of
  domesticity under the close supervision of their
  mothers, preparing them for lives oriented
  towards domestic labor and consumption

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Patriarchal family

• Sons are encouraged and allowed to "experiment"
  and take risks
• Daughters in this scenario are closely monitored
  so that participation in deviant or delinquent
  activity is unlikely.

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Egalitarian family

• Is characterized by little difference between the
  mother's and father's work roles, so that
  responsibility for child rearing is shared
• Neither child receives the close supervision
  present over females in the paternalistic family
• Middle class aspirations and values dominate
  mobility, success, autonomy, and risk taking
• Daughter's deviance now mirrors their brother's

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Middle-class girls

• ...middle-class girls are the most likely to
  violate the law because they are less closely
  controlled than their lower-class counterparts
• And in homes where both parents hold positions of
  power, girls are more likely to have the same
  expectations of career success as their brothers
• Power-control theory, then, implies that
  middle-class youth of both sexes will have higher
  crime rates than their lower-class peers

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Assessing power-control theory

• Hagan's theory has been criticized as being
  basically a fairly straightforward adaptation of
  the "liberation hypothesis," as females
  experience upward mobility and status change,
  their access to deviant and illicit behaviors
  expand

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Assessing power-control theory

• Female deviance becomes a product of the "sexual
  scripts" within patriarchal families that make it
  more likely for them to become the victims of
  both sexual and physical abuse
• If they run away, the juvenile court supports
  parental rights and returns them to the home,
  persistent violations lead to incarceration and
  future trouble as official delinquents/deviants
  or life on the street where survival depends on
  involvement in crime