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Studied by 35 peoplePatriarchy, 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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