(3) explaining female criminality

What is the liberation thesis?

• Freda Adler (1975): women’s liberation —> increasing female criminality & creation of more serious female criminals

• access to both legitimate AND illegitimate opportunity structures increasing

• drew on FBI arrest statistics that she claimed demonstrated dramatic increases in serious female criminality alongside increase in female labour force participation

• eg. 1960-1972, arrests of female robbers increased by 277%

What is the “ladette”?

• social character portrayed by media as a girl who wants to be just as hard-drinking + delinquent as the lads

• Tara Young (2009): “teenage girls are no longer spectators hovering on the periphery of street gangs” but are active members

• however, linguistic association of this character with masculinity suggests social deviance still seen as male by default

How can liberation thesis be criticised?

• Adler’s work relies heavily on percentage changes, but if base line figures for recorded female changes are low, small numerical increases would produce large percentage changes

• Sharpe suggested that women were more likely to be prosecuted for violent offences because female violence was seen as a growing social problem ~ possibly not an actual substantial increase in female criminality

• Heidensohn + Silvestri: over long term, ratio of female/ male offending fairly stable ~ men still 4x more likely to be arrested for violence

How is poverty related to female crime?

• Pat Carlen (1988): studied 39 women convicted of crime ~ found that most were WC

• argues against liberation thesis: majority of sample touched by few gains that women had experienced but rather experienced restricted opportunities

• adopts control theory: WC women controlled by promise of rewards & encouraged to make “class deal” (consumer/ economic goods for dutiful work) + “gender deal” (psychological + material rewards for labours or “love” of male breadwinner) ~ when these rewards unavailable, deal breaks down & criminality becomes a possibility

• women studied attributed criminality to 4 main factors:

  1. drug/alcohol addiction

  2. quest for excitement

  3. being raised in care

  4. poverty

• ie. few women had experiences hypothetical benefits of class deal; many rejected gender deal due to experiences of family life (sexual/ physical abuse; time in care)

How can Pat Carlen’s (1988) study be evaluated?

• small sample so dangerous to generalise

• however, support from other studies finding that deprivation + disadvantage are typical of female offenders eg. Corston Report which found that 61% of sample of women in prison had no qualifications