Women and Crime Midterm

Casual Risk Factors

• Trauma

• Family Relationships

• Partner Relationships

• Postpartum Depression

• Mental Health

• Lack of Resources

• Addiction

• Alcoholism

4 Causes of Female Criminality

1. Biological: Human biology and hormones (who has mental health problems or postpartum)

2. Psychological: Learned behavior of aggressiveness and violence (trauma)

3. Familial: Poor parenting practices (families are involved with crime ex. shoplifting or pickpocketing)

4. Community: Diminished economic opportunities, socially, disorganized (lack of resources)

Feminism

1. Social and political movement, large masses of people to have change and change opinions and end the (isms)

2. Changing the way we see men's and women’s rights and campaigning for equal rights—traditionally, things are not equal.

3. Looking at the world not as it is but how it could be

Transformative Feminist Criminality

• How the criminal justice system responds to women and womens issues

• Directs its attention toward gender as a key force in social control

Radical Theory

Patriarchal gender arrangements lead to men’s efforts to control women's sexuality, often through violence and abuse.

ex. men made women's roles to cook, clean, make babies; men beat women, and rape

Liberal theory

Gender oppression would be reduced or eliminated by altering the way that girls and boys are socialized and by reforming laws and their implementation. (my own choosing and autonomy)

Socialist theory

Multiple ways to be oppressed or controlled. Being manipulated, gender and class in oppression, gender, race, sexuality, and nation

Black Feminist Criminology

The challenges of understanding the realities of the lives of women who differ in their combination of age, color, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

• oppression for not feeling invited to the movement

Why do we measure crime?

• Measure crime using NIBRS, UCR, and NCVS

• How, what, and when do we help people?

• How much to spend on resources

• help to see if crime is up or down

NIBRS

National Incident Based Reporting System

UCR

FBI

NCVS

Home Survey

Crime Categories

1st Degree, 2nd Degree, 3rd Degree > FELONIES

Felony

Serious arrestable offense punishable by a year or MORE in jail

Misdemeanor

Non-serious offense punishable by a year or LESS or a cash fine $ (criminal attempt)

Crimes women partake in?

• Prostitution

• Shoplifting

• Domestic Violence

• Drug Possession

• Child abuse, Abandonment, etc.

• Bribery

Why do victims seek out the CJ System?

• protection

• help

• resources

• justice

Victim Blaming

• Victim’s fault

• "Why are you wearing that?”

• “Why did you stay?”

• “Why did you not fight back””

• “What were you thinking?"

Accuser vs. Victim

• Secondary victimization

• traumatized by the event

• Experience of the hospital

• Police officer/ criminal justice

• “ I assume responsibility for the assault.”

Cohen/Felson

Routine activity theory: we put ourselves in situations

1. Willing offender

2. Potential target

3. Absence of a capable guardian

Lombroso/Ferrero

Criminal women are more like men; gendered white women are more like criminal men

• started to stick to women

• narrow forehead, high cheekbones

• have evil tendencies

Sheldon/Glueck

Females are related in family and delinquency.

• if you have a family member in jail, you might do

• Who's ladylike like and who's not?

Why do women engage in crime?

• for their families

• took matters into own hands

• Financial

• lack of resources

• power

• only option

• forced into it

• postpartum depression

• revenge

• substance abuse

Travis Hershi

Social bond theory and attachments, involvement, and belief systems

• crime should STOP or CONTINUE

• desisting behavior and not going to do crime/ go to jail

Godfredson & Hershi

It's all about self-control. the more my family is in my life and help me to learn self-control, the less likely I am to do crime/delinquent behavior.

Victimization

Is why women offend; women get stuck in the cycle of victimization. That's why they offend

Mendelsons

Females are responsible for their own victimization.

• wearing something and “asking for it”

• you have the power of your going to be a victim (you WILL be a victim)

Von Heating: Typology

Young people are victims because they’re young and immature females; the elderly victims have mental issues/diseases. People with low IQs are taken advantage of; immigrants are undocumented; there are language barriers and cultural barriers; and people who are intoxicated are taken advantage of.

Cohen & Felson (Route Activity Theory)

A. Motivated offender (wants to steal my stuff)

B. Suitable Target (my house)

C. Absence of a guardian (the person protecting someone/ home)

Rape myth

Something that is NOT true

Cultural Scripts

Shifts behavior from the perpetrator to the victim

Acquaintance vs. Stranger Rape

Acquaintance rape: a friend, someone you know, is less likely to report acquaintance rape; it is 90% on college campuses.

Stranger Rape: Someone you don’t know more likely to report high level of physical force.

Spouse Rape

Husbands and wives can be raped.