Women, Crime and Criminology (Routledge Revivals)
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Women, Crime and Criminology (Routledge Revivals)

A Feminist Critique

Carol Smart

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eBook - ePub

Women, Crime and Criminology (Routledge Revivals)

A Feminist Critique

Carol Smart

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About This Book

First published in 1977, Women, Crime and Criminology presents a feminist critique of classical and contemporary theories of female criminality. It addresses the issue that criminology literature has, throughout history, been predominantly male-oriented, always treating female criminality as marginal to the 'proper' study of crime in society. Carol Smart explores a new direction in criminology, and the sociology of deviance, by investigating female crime from a committed feminist position.

Examining the types of offences committed by female offenders, Smart points to the fallacies inherent in a reliance on official statistics and shows the deficiencies of the popular argument that female emancipation has caused an increase in female crime rates. She deals with studies of prostitution and rape and considers the treatment of women – as offenders and victims – by the criminal law, the police and courts, and the penal system. Particular attention is given to the question of lenient treatment for female offenders with the conclusion that women and girls are, in some important instances, actually discriminated against in our legal and penal systems. The relationship between female criminality and mental illness is discussed and the author concludes by dealing with some of the problems inherent in developing a feminist criminology.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781136161452
Chapter 1
The nature of female criminality
Our knowledge of the nature of female criminality is still in its infancy. In comparison with the massive documentation on all aspects of male delinquency and criminality, the amount of work carried out in the area of women and crime is extremely limited. The underdevelopment of this particular area of study seems to be in part a consequence of the pervasiveness of the belief in the relative insignificance of female criminality. Of course this belief in the insignificance of the actions of women, the assumption that women are inessential and invisible, is not peculiar to the domain of criminology or the sociology of deviance; on the contrary it is a feature of all aspects of sociology and academic thought. As Ann Oakley maintains,
The concealment of women runs right through sociology. It extends from the classification of subject-areas and the definition of concepts through the topics and methods of empirical research to the construction of models and theory generally (A. Oakley, 1974, p. 3).
Criminology as a subject discipline is therefore in no way unique in its consistently male-oriented bias, but as a policy-oriented social science it may be seen to have special implications for women which extend beyond the narrow confines of academia to the actual treatment of women in the courts and in penal institutions.1
A lack of interest in female offenders at the academic level is mirrored by a similar lack of interest by the Home Office and its policy-makers. With the exception of the rebuilding of Holloway Prison, few changes have been made in the facilities available for female offenders who are institutionalized. The small number of penal establishments for women means that convicted offenders often have to be moved miles away from their home communities with obviously detrimental effects on sustaining familial and other relationships. Similarly, because of the lack of facilities for young girls who are deemed violent, we are experiencing the regrettable policy of placing juveniles into a prison like Holloway which still retains the characteristics of a fortress and a place for serious offenders.
It would be inaccurate however to argue that policy-oriented social sciences and policy-makers ignore the realm of criminal behaviour involving women simply because the offenders are women. We have, for example, no shortage of material on such areas as maternal deprivation or insanity and mental breakdown amongst women. It would seem therefore that women do merit research and study in certain circumstances, namely in the circumstances where women become definable as a social ‘problem’. It seems likely therefore that the overwhelming neglect of female criminality is directly related to the low status of female offenders as a pressing social problem. In the past female criminality has not been thought to constitute a significant threat to the social order and even in the present, with the increases in the rate of offences committed by women, criminologists and policy-makers are slow to re-evaluate the notion that female offenders are little more than insignificant irritants to the smooth running of law and order.
Traditionally it has been argued that there has been little research or interest in the area of female criminality because statistically the numbers of female offenders have been so small and insignificant (cf. Heidensohn, 1968; Radzinowicz, 1937; Smith, 1974; Walker, 1973). Indeed official criminal statistics consistently provide us with the information that not only are female offenders fewer than male offenders but also that female offenders are, in almost all cases, a tiny minority. Consequently it has been maintained that there is not enough subject material to justify research. But statistical quantity alone is not sufficient to explain why female offenders are not yet treated as a social problem. It is necessary to consider also the types of crimes women commit which appear to be predominantly trivial offences involving very little monetary value or injury, or so-called sexual offences like prostitution. Moreover, with the exception of prostitutes, it appears that most female offenders who appear in court are first offenders who are deterred from further crime more readily than male offenders (Walker, 1973). Women and girl offenders, in contrast to male offenders, therefore present less of an irritation to the police, the courts and the penal system and consequently there has been little official requirement or support for studies of female criminality. As a result of this lack of official concern, orthodox, control-oriented criminology, which has been involved in serving the needs of administrators and policy-makers, has virtually ignored the existence of female offenders. The very nature of criminology as a discipline, its traditionally narrow concerns with only those topics officially designated as social problems and its attempts to find the causes and solutions to such problems, is responsible for the sorry state of current knowledge and work on female criminality. Moreover those studies which do exist, with very few exceptions, have failed to develop beyond the most uncritical and ideologically-informed works produced during the 1940s and 50s. As Ward states in the Report to the US National Commission on Crimes of Violence, ‘Our knowledge of the character and causes of female criminality is at the same stage of development that characterized our knowledge of male criminality some thirty or more years ago’ (Ward et al., 1969, p. 847).
An important consequence of this lack of development has been the total neglect of any critical analysis of the common-sense perceptions of female criminality informing classical (Lombroso and Ferrero, 1895; Pollak, 1961) and contemporary studies (Konopka, 1969; Cowie et al., 1968). Hence many unexplicated, culturally specific assumptions about the ‘true nature’ of women which are inherent in common-sense understandings have come to constitute the basis of criminologists’ attempts to comprehend ‘scientifically’ the nature of female crime. It is not surprising therefore that many myths, from the theological belief in the fundamental evil and weakness of Woman to the paternalistic belief in Woman’s frailty and gentleness, still prevail in accounts of female criminality.
The lack of interest in female criminality which is displayed by orthodox criminology has also had the effect of rendering it insignificant to more contemporary schools of thought within the discipline. There appears to have been no need to counter the conservative tradition with a more liberal perspective, nor indeed to replace the liberal tradition with a radical or critical analysis largely because of the insignificance of female criminality in the ‘old’ criminology. Virtually by default therefore inadequate and ideologically informed studies have become the main or major sources of reference in this area, no substantial body of criticism being readily available to reveal their limitations. In contrast, in the case of studies of male criminality a certain progression may be traced from the classical school of Beccaria, to the emergence of positivism which upholds a belief in biological or psychological determinism, to the subcultural and interactionist theorists and finally to those works displaying a Marxist influence. With the study of female criminality this development has largely been arrested at the positivist stage with the result that our present understanding of female deviance is based predominantly upon biological or psychological drives and urges which are deemed to be peculiar to the female constitution or psyche. The exception to this pattern of arrested development within criminology is the interactionist study of prostitution; the supposed sexual deviation of prostitutes being well suited to the focus of deviancy theory in the 1960s, preoccupied as it primarily was with victimless crimes and ‘vices’. The main thrust of theories of female criminality has however remained in the hands of the positivists with the result that theories relating to female criminality, even more than those concerned with male criminality, support and justify the prevailing methods of treatment and the ideology of social control adhered to by the administrators of legal and penal policy. This relationship between positivism and social control has been well documented, although its specific influence in relation to female offenders has been overlooked. For example Taylor, Walton and Young state,
For the politician and the planner, positivism provides a model of human nature which, in its consensual aspects, allows the world ‘as it is’ to remain unquestioned and, in its determinist notion of human action, offers the possibility of rational planning and control (Taylor et al., 1973, p. 35).
In a situation in which even the classical concepts of self-determination have always been denied to women (their mental and moral capacities being likened to children and lunatics) the advent of positivism has merely served to confirm common-sense perceptions about women in general and female offenders in particular—namely that they are prey to their biological and psychic constitution.
It is certain that many myths prevail in studies of female offenders and yet before these can be dispelled it is essential to discuss the nature of female criminality as it appears to theorists who have attempted to provide accounts and explanations. In order to understand the basis of many theories of female criminality it is necessary to know which crimes women apparently engage in and to what extent they are, or appear to be, involved in criminal careers. Furthermore, as the assumptions and opinions inherent in studies of female criminality are generally dependent upon, or derived from, some kind of statistical evidence, usually extracted from official criminal statistics, the statistical picture of female crime acquires additional significance in any analysis of the theories and practice of female criminality.
The statistical basis of the common-sense perception of female criminality
I have already noted that the most well-documented feature of female criminality derived from available statistical information is the relatively few numbers of women who engage in what is legally defined as crime. However, the proportion of women who engage in crime varies quite considerably according to the nature of the offence. For example, in the case of shoplifting official statistics show that, with the exception of the figures for 1974, the numbers of female shoplifters usually exceed the numbers of males. Where an offence like the theft of a motor vehicle is concerned, however, the numbers of female offenders are a very small percentage of the numbers of male. (For example, in 1973 a mere 737 women were convicted of this offence compared with a total of 31,222 men found guilty.) In general the numbers of women offenders rarely exceed men but some of the offences included in the official statistics actually exclude the members of one sex by legal definition, thereby creating some wholly ‘female’ or ‘male’ offences. I will refer to this category of offences by the term ‘sex-specific’ crimes and will differentiate them from those offences which may be committed by either sex but which in practice are more common to one sex than the other. These latter offences I will refer to as ‘sex-related’ crimes.
Sex-specific offences
There are very few sex-specific offences in the English legal system as the law is, in principle, held to be equally applicable to all regardless of sex, race, class and other distinctions. One exception to this is infanticide which is an offence that only women can commit. In effect infanticide is the legal recognition of postnatal depression in women. It is an offence which can only be committed when the balance of a woman’s mind is disturbed ‘by ...

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