Patriarchy, Crime, and Justice: Feminist Criminology in an Era of Backlash

• starting points:
  • publication of key journal issues and books in the 1970s
  • founding of the Women and Crime Division of the American Society of Criminology in 1982
• 20th century: looking back, looking forward
  • prior to the start of feminist crim:
  • gender violence (sexual assualt, sexual harrassment, wife abuse) was ignored, minimized, and trivialized
  • girl and women criminals were overlooked / excluded in mainstream works AND demonized, masculinized, and sexualized in that literature
  • the naming of the types and dimensions of female victimization had a significant impact on public policy
  • had to deal with the masculinization/emancipation hypothesis of women’s crime
  • argues that women are demanding equal opportunity in the crime world the same way they are demanding equal opportunity in fields of legitimate endeavor
  • ultimately concluded to be incorrect
  • 80s and 90s saw breakthrough research
  • documentation of girls’ participation in gangs
  • role of sexual and physical victimization in girls’ and women’s pathways into women’s crime
  • gender and race create unique pathways for girl and women offenders into crime
  • masculinity and crime need to be both theorized and researched
  • contemporary approaches to gender and crime
  • avoid the problems of reductionism and determinism
  • stress the complexity, tentativeness, and variability with which people negotiate gender identity
  • society and social life are patterned on the basis of gender
  • the gender order is complex and shifting
• feminist criminology and the backlash
  • crime used in politics
  • politicians waging wars on crime that really meant wars on race
  • “moral values”
    • designed to appeal to right-wing christians
    • recriminalization of abortion
    • denial of civil rights to gay and lesbian americans
  • to challenge right-wing initiatives, the field of fem crim must
    • put a greater priority on theorizing patriarchy and crime
    • focus on the ways that the definition of the crime problem and criminal justice practices support patriarchal practices and worldviews
• african american women account for almost half of all incarcerated women
• media demonization and the masculinization of female offenders
  • the second wave of feminism had triggered an array of conservative political, policy, and media responses
  • steady stream of media stories about violent and bad girls
  • masculinization theory: the same forces that propel men into violence will increasingly produce violence in girls and women once they are freed from the constraints of their gender
  • issues with this:
    • girls’ violence was not increasing 
    • it created a self-fulfilling prophecy
    • the criminal justice system was harder on girls because of it
• criminalizing victimization
  • mandatory arrest in domestic assault cases
  • win bc domestic assault was finally becoming criminalized
  • loss because victim advocates had to work with the police and prosecutors, which they distrusted
  • in the mid 80s there was overwhelming evidence that arrest decreased violence against women
    • later proven that arrest was far less effective than originally thought
    • arrests for adult women increased by 30%
    • arrests for adult men fell by 5.8%
    • mutual arrests: arresting both parties in a domestic violence incident if it’s unclear who the primary aggressor is
    • fighting back against domestic violence was now also considered domestic violence
    • men use the system to intimidate and control their wives
• women’s imprisonment and the emergence of vengeful equity
  • women’s imprisonment rates are soaring far more than women’s crime rates
  • began at the same time that the US dropped the idea of rehabilitation
  • exploited the public fear of crime to adopt the manner of mean-spirited crime policies
  • vengeful equity: treating women offenders as though they were men, particularly when the outcome is punitive
  • pregnant women are shackled to the bed while giving labor
  • women’s boot camps
  • institutional subcultures in women’s prisons make it unlikely that women will speak out against abuse
  • encourage correctional officers to cover for each other
  • inadequate protected accorded to women who file complaints
  • public stereotype of women in prison makes it hard for her to support her case in court
  • cos punishing women inmates for offenses that would be ignored in male prisons

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