Casualties Of Community Disorder

Women's Careers In Violent Crime

Deborah Baskin, Ira Sommers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813329932
• eBook ISBN: 9780429981449
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a detailed account of the criminal careers of 170 women who committed violent street crimes in New York City, describing their entry into criminal activities, their development into persistent street criminals, and, for some, their eventual transition out of street crime.

Chapter One

Introduction: Our Journey into the World of Women and Violent Crime

It is August 1989. We are in the midst of our usual summer vacation in which we travel across the Navajo Reservation as it spans the four states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. The evening sky appears to be on fire tonight as it displays varying hues of purple, red, and blue. The air is fresh and clear, and the noises are those of coyotes awakening from their daytime naps and of cars whizzing past on highways that cut across the desert.

Back home in Brooklyn, New York, the skies, too, are ablaze. The pollution, humidity, and heat emanating from the concrete city below have turned the sky into a veritable light show, mimicking the desert skies of the West and momentarily distracting the people below from the cacophony of car alarms, heavy traffic, and other street noises. On this evening, a few blocks from our empty apartment, the quiet was shattered by yet another sound.

A 34-year-old woman ... [was] shot in the face during a robbery ... a couple of doors from her home. Two ... women, a 24-year-old and a 26-year-old ... were arrested and charged with attempted murder, robbery, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the shooting and robbery, said police.

She was approached from behind by two women, said police, who shot her, took her wallet containing $320 in cash and fled... . The victim’s property and two guns—a .380 automatic, which was found on one of the suspects, and a .22 caliber starter’s pistol, found nearby— were recovered. (Park Slope Paper, 1989)

Apprehension of these women took place under our family room window, in a park that, in the evenings of 1989, was home to a few homeless individuals, a social milieu for the neighborhood alcoholics and wanna-be gang members, as well as a distribution point for a small but busy street-level crack-cocaine market. It was here that these two women were found trying to “cop” some crack with the money that they had just stolen from our neighbor.

Until this event, we had little professional interest in the topic of women and crime. By and large, criminologists concerned with this issue had convinced us that the problem was indeed a small one. They cited available statistics in which female offenders, especially those involved in violent street crime, made up a minuscule and inconsequential proportion of the offender population. Figures provided by these criminologists showed that in any crime category, the female rate of violence never exceeded one-quarter of the male rate and that men were seven times more likely than women to be arrested for a violent crime (Kruttschnitt, 1993). With these data, the majority of criminologists who write about female offending “prove” the insignificance of female involvement (Steffensmeier, 1983; Feinman, 1986; Leonard, 1982; Naffine, 1987; Steffensmeier and Steifel, 1992).

Further, these criminologists developed theories and perspectives that explained away the “offender” label and instead left women who were involved in violent street crime with the dubious distinction of being “victims” (Price and Sokoloff, 1982; Sarri, 1987; Arnold, 1990; Daly, 1992; Chesney-Lind and Shelden, 1992; Lake, 1993). Causal blame for all female involvement in street crime was placed on fathers, brothers, lovers, pimps, and others who “coerced” the women into participation. Thus, if men did not physically and sexually abuse their daughters, forcing them to run away and into a life of crime for survival; if girlfriends and wives were not turned into accomplices, prostitutes, or drug addicts desperate to do anything for a fix or for love; or if these men just did not abandon their families, leaving women with no other options but to commit crime in order to support children, then Donna Reeds they would all be. That was what these criminologists would have us believe, at least until 1989.

By 1989, the crack-cocaine markets had wreaked havoc on communities already on the brink of decay. News stories reported on the deaths of ordinary citizens, children and adults alike, in the battles over turf, profits, and reputation. Abandoned buildings and lots were overtaken by drug entrepreneurs eager to set up shop. Prostitutes, grandmothers, nieces, and daughters were recruited into various levels of the distribution market. A growing number of children were being born crack-addicted, and the faces of their mothers confronted us on the news every evening.

But when, in 1989, the effects of these drug markets spilled over into our neighborhood, and the histories of these two women offenders was revealed in articles, court reports, and community gossip, the generic explanation of female offending, seemed to us to be inadequate. Further, local newspapers, jumping on the bandwagon to “demonize” women offenders, began to routinely include the gender of the offenders in their crime blotter stories and even ran several feature articles concerning the infiltration of women into the ranks of violent offending.

Community reaction to this event and to subsequent media accounts further piqued our interest in exploring this topic. The neighborhood was buzzing with talk about the new breed of young women offenders. A community group coalesced around the summer night robbery in order to monitor court proceedings. The local sentiment was that these women must be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law; no plea bargaining, and definitely no sympathy was to be given.

One local fear was that owing to their gender, the actions of these women would be assessed as being less serious than if committed by males and that they would be released to continue preying on our community. A second fear was that of the unknown. If we are now aware of these two women, how many more are there who are lurking behind bushes and trees, in alleyways and stairwells, ready to pounce on us law-abiding citizens?

Our friends, knowing what we did for a living, asked our opinions, and dinner conversation would turn inevitably toward trying to make sense out of the available information. Curious as to whether this particular incident in our neighborhood involving these women robbers was idiosyncratic or whether we were guilty of gender blindness or, worse, of assuming that all violent crimes were committed by men, we undertook this study.

This book represents the culmination of 8 years of investigation that includes interviews with 170 women offenders who were involved in violent street crime and who grew up and were living in New York City during the bulk of their criminal careers. From our work, we found that, as disorganizing social, cultural, and economic influences took hold in vulnerable communities during the 1970s and 1980s, the reigning explanations for violent female offending were cracking under the weight of these changes.

Although some women continue to be forced into violent offending by their significant others or by circumstances related to drug addiction or single parenthood, a growing number of women have found themselves pulled into violent street crime by the same forces that affect their male counterparts. Combinations of individual-level as well as peer, school, and other socializing influences, such as neighborhood changes, have been pulling an increasing number of underclass women in New York City into the ranks of violent offending. In many ways, this book provides a perspective both on the slow and painful demise of the community as a source of support for women who are coming of age today and on the demise of antiquated theories that have permitted us to ignore the changes until now.

Earlier Conceptualizations

To a large extent, prior to the 1990s, studies of female offending focused on criminal activities traditionally associated with the feminine role, such as shoplifting (Cameron, 1964), prostitution and other forms of sexual deviance (Alexander, 1987; Cohen, 1980), and varied but less serious forms of “street deviance” (Carlen, 1988; Miller, 1986). Explanations for these behaviors were marked by stark stereotypical contrasts. Although male criminality was explained in such global terms as the fulfillment of cultural aspirations (Merton, 1957) and peer approval (Sykes and Matza, 1957) or as a result of the failure to establish stakes in conformity (Hirschi, 1969) or in favorable definitions of the law (Sutherland, 1939), explanations for women rarely strayed far from home. Female criminality was attributed mostly to biological (Lombroso and Ferrero, 1895; Pollak, 1950) or psychological (Freud, 1933) factors or confined to home or family influences (Morris, 1964).

When explanations were tied to changes in the world outside of the individual or home, they were linked to the movement for women’s liberation. Several works, beginning with Adler’s Sisters in Crime (1975) and Simon’s Women and Crime (1975), linked the contemporary women’s movement to the increasing involvement of women in criminal activity (see also Noblit and Burcart, 1976; Deming, 1977; Adler and Simon, 1979; Adler, 1981; Austin, 1982). Their argument has been that women’s liberation not only increased social and legal equality but also enhanced women’s opportunities for criminal involvement. Thus, at the same time that women were making gains in the world of legitimate enterprise, they were also making headway in a wide variety of criminal activities, ranging from property offenses to terrorism (Klemesrud, 1978). These advances were attributed to changes in female personality (i.e., increased competitiveness, instrumentalism), structural opportunities (i.e., new employment settings), and behaviors (i.e., greater willingness and ability to assume male roles and responsibilities; Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975). However, as we shall see from the women in our study, the outcome of these transformations contradicted the success story expected by proponents of this perspective.

Whereas the liberation thesis attempted to formulate gender-specific explanations for the escalating involvement of women in criminal activity, there are those who argued that traditional (male) theories of criminality, with or without some minor modification, could explain the crime patterns of women. Smith and Paternoster (1987:142) identified several studies that attempted to test the applicability of such traditional perspectives as social bonding (Jensen and Raymond, 1976; Elliott and Voss, 1974; Smith, 1979; Krohn and Massey, 1980), differential opportunity (Datesman, Scarpitti, and Stephenson, 1975; Smith, 1979; Rankin, 1980; Simons, Miller, and Aigner, 1980), deterrence theory (Burkett and Jensen, 1975; Anderson, Chiricos, and Waldo, 1977; Smith, 1979), and differential association (Elliott and Voss, 1974; Simons, Miller, and Aigner, 1980) to female criminality.

The generalizability thesis suffers from key problems, however. All of the studies noted previously focused only on youth who were engaged in relatively minor delinquency, such as marijuana use or status offenses. Moreover, even in the best of these studies, the evidence has been limited and inconclusive. Further, the failure to situate analyses within “bounded spheres of interaction” (Sullivan, 1989:9), that is, specific communities in which choices concerning crime, work, and family are made, contributes to the sterility of this perspective. Perhaps more important, as a result of these weaknesses this thesis cannot represent women’s lives and social worlds, and by extension, it fails to explain women’s criminality.

Even when attempts have been made to explore women’s worlds, serious questions remain. Some have argued that the increasing feminization of poverty forces women into a wider array of criminal activities, including violent street crime. For instance, Steven Box, in his review of research on unemployment and crime, found that “the most plausible reason for [the increase in women’s participation in conventional criminality] is that more women have become economically marginalized” (1987:43). Nonetheless, in its attempt to link the feminization of poverty to increased participation of women in conventional criminality, this perspective fails to account for the fact that most poor women are, in fact, law-abiding.

In addition, because of its overly economistic view of human behavior, this perspective cannot answer the fundamental question: Why now? Without exploring the social, cultural, and political transformations that have affected underclass communities, this perspective cannot delineate the link between poverty and criminality. As a result, this explanation, for many of the same reasons as the generalization thesis, leaves that connection unclear and in need of further investigation.

One of the earliest analyses of the connection between poverty and criminality was done by Pat Carlen, a British sociologist who traced the criminal careers of 39 women offenders through life history interviews (Carlen, 1988). With Carlen’s help, these women were able to identify four factors, in various combinations, that constituted the bases for their involvement in criminal careers. Poverty, placement in residential homes outside of the family of origin during childhood (e.g., juvenile correctional facilities), drug and alcohol addiction, and the quest for excitement all were related to the development of their criminal careers. As a result of the difficulties engendered by these conditions, the women in Carlen’s study were cut off from developing commitments to both traditional family ties (the “gender deal”) and legitimate employment opportunities (the “class deal”). Instead, they embarked on long careers in crime that were punctuated with stays in correctional facilities. These periods of incarceration dashed any hopes of desistance by further narrowing the options available to them upon release.

Despite its improvement over earlier and even contemporaneous works in this area, Carlen’s analysis of women, crime, and poverty falls short in answering what were, to us, two fundamental questions: How are women’s criminal careers (e.g., initiation, persistence, and termination) circumscribed specifically by gender? And what accounts for the increasing pull of certain groups of women into the world of violent crime? Although it is clear that specific subgroups of males contribute disproportionately to the violent crime problem, how can we account for the wide variation in violent crime participation when race and age variables are included in the equation?

Overview of the Book

This book has three interrelated directions. First, we examine how processes of urban structural and economic decay have combined to create new and invigorate old criminogenic factors. We identify factors that cut across gender categories (e.g., peers, general drug abuse, victimization, criminal opportunities) and others that apply primarily to women (e.g., decline in family and neighborhood supervision, earlier termination of education, and crack addiction). These factors have resulted in alarming changes in women’s participation in violent street crime. Second, we explore how personal decisions related to such participation are mediated by women’s experiences and understanding of their present environment. Third, we describe a framework we have developed for understanding how the interaction between personal history, social processes, and a changing inner city structures women’s participation in violent crime. More specifically, early socialization experiences (child abuse and neglect; family, peer, and community networks), substance abuse and criminal careers, and the movement in and out of conventional activities (education, legitimate employment, marriage) are linked to broader social, economic, and situational processes.

The Research Enterprise

In order to explore these issues, we consulted a wide range of sources. We collected official data on arrests, incarcerations, and neighborhood socioeconomic indicators. Although we are aware of the limitations inherent in using official data (see Bursik and Grasmick, 1993), the purpose here was not to use them as direct indicators of the phenomena under study, but rather to answer some general questions: Have there been changes in the trends and patterns of women’s participation in violent street crime and in the communities in which they live? Furthermore, these sorts of data paint broad brushstrokes so that finer, more richly detailed data can be contextualized.

So that we might add substance to the study as well as obtain more direct indicators, we conducted in-depth, life history interviews with 170 women who had committed violent felony crimes (robbery, assault, homicide) in New York City. We chose the life history technique for several reasons. For one, we were dissatisfied with the current hegemony of two competing explanations for violent crime: that of rational choice and that of no choice. Clearly, it would be easier to say, as do many politicians and a growing number of criminologists, that these women, plain and simple, choose to become violent offenders. It is equally easy to say, as do many social scientists, that these women have no choice but to become involved in crime. However, it may be that the more accurate understanding is somewhere in between these two points—somewhere in the terrain made up by the social worlds through which these women pass.

Our interest in examining the pushes and pulls of the various social worlds encountered and experienced by these women was facilitated by the life history technique. Through these interviews, the women were able to represent to us a level of activity, creativity, and human agency that might otherwise not have been attainable. It permitted us to understand how their experiences, relationships, and other processes structurally and experientially established how the “choices” they faced emerged and how they were then defined. In this way, we were better able to understand how embedded their criminal careers were within larger social worlds that, by and large, reinforced their involvement.

The value of life history interviews in this process lies in the wealth of data that is collected as well as the usefulness of the interviews in facilitating the development of “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973). With the assistance of highly trained interviewers, 170 women developed autobiographical accounts of their life experiences that have enabled us to appreciate better the wide range of everyday processes that contributed to the establishment and maintenance of their criminal careers.

Furthermore, these types of interviews allowed us to assess the viability of existing theories for explaining the pathways and careers of the women in this study. And it was interesting to find that women rejected the explanation of being “forced” into crime with the notably common comment that they “would never go up the river for some man.” At the same time, they rejected the suggestions of the politicians and rational choice advocates that they made “choices.” Again, for them, it was somewhere in between. Since people live their lives according to their own interpretations of their circumstances, the views of reality that these women provide give us a more extensive understanding of the social worlds of violent street crime.

To tap into these overlapping so...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Crime and Urban Distress
• 3 Getting into Crime and Violence
• 4 Work and Crime and Crime as Work
• 5 The What, Where, When, Why, and Who of Violent Events
• 6 Getting Out of Crime and Violence
• 7 Breaking with the Past: Challenging Assumptions About Women and Violent Crime