Women, Crime and Justice in Context
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Women, Crime and Justice in Context

Contemporary Perspectives in Feminist Criminology from Australia and New Zealand

Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour, Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour

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eBook - ePub

Women, Crime and Justice in Context

Contemporary Perspectives in Feminist Criminology from Australia and New Zealand

Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour, Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour

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About This Book

Women, Crime and Justice in Context presents contemporary feminist approaches to key issues in criminal justice. It draws together key researchers from Australia and New Zealand to offer a context-specific textbook that covers all of the major debates in the discipline in an accessible way.

This book examines both the foundational texts and cutting-edge contributions to the topic and acknowledges the unique challenges and debates in the local Australian and New Zealand context. Written as an entry-level text, it introduces undergraduate students to key theories and debates on the topics of offending, victimization and the criminal justice system. It explores key topics in feminist criminology with chapters exploring sex work, prison abolitionism, community punishment, media representations of crime and victims, and the impacts of digital technology on gendered violence. Centring on an intersectional approach, the book includes chapters that focus on disability, queer criminology, indigenous perspectives, migration and service-user perspectives. The book concludes by exploring future directions in feminist approaches to crime and justice.

This book will be essential reading for undergraduates studying feminist criminology, gender and crime, queer criminology, socio-legal studies, intersectionality, sociology and criminal justice.

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Yes, you can access Women, Crime and Justice in Context by Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour, Anita Gibbs, Fairleigh Gilmour in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Sozialwissenschaften & Kriminologie. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2022
ISBN
9781000531572

1

Introduction

Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour and Anita Gibbs
DOI: 10.4324/9780429316975-1
Our starting position for this book is that contemporary feminist approaches to key issues in criminal justice are a vital part of criminology as a discipline. Feminist criminology asks us to take a critical approach to gender and crime, including the gendered patterns and impacts of victimisation, offending and criminalisation, and the gendered operation of the criminal justice system.
Since the advent of second-wave feminism, when violence against women and girls (VAWG) was brought into the public realm, feminist criminologists and activists have sought to address this issue. Family violence is a serious social issue in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. However, despite public campaigns, decades of research and activism, and falling crime rates more generally, the prevalence of family violence remains high (Fanslow et al. 2021; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2019). Knowledge about gendered violence is not necessarily increasing. Research in Australia (ANROWS 2013), for example, shows that young people are increasingly likely, and more likely than older people, to think (incorrectly) that women and men commit intimate partner violence (IPV) at equal rates, cause similar rates of physical harm, and that levels of fear are equal for male and female victims. More than half of the young people surveyed thought that women make up or exaggerate claims of IPV in family violence cases; almost half think it is somewhat acceptable to electronically track a partner without her consent. There is limited evidence of progress.
Meanwhile, both Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia have seen significant shifts in terms of police responses to sexual violence, and rape law reform. Nonetheless, conviction rates remain low (RNZ 2021; Bronitt 2021) and victims continue to be hesitant to report to police, with research indicating that despite reviews into criminal processing responses, gender inequalities and patriarchal beliefs continue to shape not just the prevalence of sexual assault but official responses (Jordan 2011). Public responses to gendered violence, particularly in the #MeToo era, suggest a shift in popular discourses around VAWG (Fileborn et al. 2019). Yet there remain significant issues in terms of popular and media discourse that reinforces victim-blaming and trivialising offending (Gilmore 2019). Meanwhile, some groups are over-represented in victimisation statistics, yet receive considerably less public attention than others and are less likely to be perceived as “legitimate” victims. An intersectional feminist lens is necessary here, to examine how not only gendered but racialised and classed discourses become integral to constructions of sympathetic victims, or – in the case of homicide – “grievable” victims (Hart and Gilbertson 2018).
Considering these tensions, this collection invites us to take a critical look at victimisation. The chapters explore the impacts of criminal justice and law reform, as well as their limitations, and alternative avenues, moving forward, for addressing VAWG. Considering the limited impacts of the criminal processing system on reducing violence against women, some feminist scholars and activists in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia have argued for alternative approaches to addressing the social problem of gendered violence. Many of the key prison abolitionist organisations, activists and theorists globally have been feminist in approach. This is also true in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, where alternative approaches to the criminal processing system continue to be led by organisations – such as Sisters Inside and People Against Prisons Aotearoa – that take an intersectional approach and acknowledge gendered violence and gendered pathways to offending as key issues.
The criminalisation of women, meanwhile, is a key focus for these organisations, but also for feminist criminology more broadly. While women still make up a minority of incarcerated people, and commit less serious offences, women’s rate of imprisonment is increasing. Recent cases in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia have drawn attention to key issues in the incarceration and treatment of women. Sisters Inside’s #Free Her campaign in Australia raised money for people held in Western Australian prisons who have no criminal convictions but were imprisoned for their inability to pay fines, the majority of whom are Aboriginal single mothers. As the campaign argued, the state is using “prison as the default response to poverty and homelessness” (Sisters Inside 2020), with a disproportionate impact on Indigenous women. This incarceration of Indigenous women for unpaid fines is particularly disturbing given their treatment in criminal processing systems. In 2014, Ms Dhu, a 22-year-old Yamatji woman,1 died in police custody in Western Australia after being locked up for unpaid fines after police arrived to arrest her partner for violating an apprehended violence order. She asked for medical assistance prior to her death, as she was experiencing pain and difficulty breathing – which turned out to be broken ribs due to IPV, pneumonia and developing septicaemia. However, police officers and medical personnel “dismissed her as a druggie with ‘behavioural issues,’ faking illness to escape punishment” (Blue 2017, p. 299). Some experts argued that the fact that Ms Dhu was Aboriginal and had injected drugs may have coloured the response to her serious medical issues (Ceranic 2015). However, activism in this area has had impacts: Dhu’s death and the resulting response catalysed law reforms in 2020 to reduce the practice of jailing people for unpaid fines in Western Australia. The over-incarceration of Indigenous women and their inhumane treatment in Australian prisons nonetheless remain key issues.
Recently, the case of Mihi Bassett has demonstrated the dehumanising treatment of women in Aotearoa New Zealand prisons. Bassett and other prisoners were taken to court on arson charges after setting fire to property at Auckland Women’s Prison in 2019. However, during the hearing and a subsequent disputed facts hearing, Judge McNaughton became more concerned with the treatment of prisoners, particularly Bassett, various aspects of which he described as “excessive, degrading and fundamentally inhumane” and “an unnecessary invasion of privacy and an affront to dignity” (Espiner 2021b). After Corrections unlawfully held her in segregation for months, Bassett tried to commit suicide in 2020. Bassett had also been forced to lie on the ground in order to receive food, and had not been allowed to participate in education or training programmes. Corrections were aware she was suicidal. After she was resuscitated following her suicide attempt, she did not want to leave her cell. Guards threatened her with pepper spray and put her in a headlock. Corrections officers wished to put Bassett – who has a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – in a prison gown – “for her own safety,” and when she refused to take off her underwear they cut it off with a Hoffman knife (Espiner 2021a).
The experiences of Dhu and Bassett demonstrate some of the key issues facing criminalised women. The rate of imprisonment for women is growing faster than the rate for men, despite their less serious offending. The majority of women in prison in Australia have committed minor, non-violent offences and are serving short sentences (Kilroy 2016). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in particular are charged at high rates for minor offending and are more likely to be in prison serving shorter sentences than non-Indigenous women (Bartels 2012). Australian research indicates that offence types are different for men and women. Women in prison are more likely than men to be imprisoned for non-violent property offences (such as theft and fraud) and drug offences, while they are far less likely to be imprisoned for sex offences (Bartels et al. 2020). Nonetheless, in Queensland, the female prison population grew by 59 per cent between 2006 and 2016, resulting in significant overcrowding and negative impacts on women in prison (ADCQ 2019). While the prison population in general indicates marked social disadvantage, women who enter prison are more socially disadvantaged and have more complex needs than men (Stathopoulos and Quadara 2014).
A review of the international literature on the characteristics of women in prison indicated that shared characteristics include: histories of childhood victimisation, particularly sexual abuse; a background of state care; mental health issues; intellectual impairments; substance misuse issues; housing instability; primary care of dependent children; low educational attainment; minimal employment histories (compared with male prisoners); and victimisation as adolescents and adults (Stathopoulos and Quadara 2014). A review of the Australian literature on women in prison indicated that the literature is consistent in identifying “a trifecta of factors that characterise women in Corrections: mental illness/poor mental health; alcohol and substance dependency; and histories of early interpersonal victimisation, particularly child sexual abuse” (Stathopoulos and Quadara 2014, p. 8). Women in Aotearoa New Zealand prisons have high rates of PTSD; high prevalence of family violence, rape and/or sexual assault; three-quarters have diagnosed mental health problems; and most have comorbid mental health and substance disorders across their lifetime (McGlue 2016). Research in Aotearoa New Zealand indicates high rates of victimisation with resulting high levels of trauma within the prison population, with particularly high rates of PTSD among women prisoners (Bevan 2017).
Of particular concern are the impacts on Indigenous women. In Queensland, over one-third of women prisoners are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander – they are more likely to be held in high security and make up more than half of the women prisoners on safety orders or separate confinements (ADCQ 2019). While there has been an overall increase in the imprisonment rate in Australia, there has been a disproportionate increase for certain groups of people: Indigenous Australians, people with cognitive and mental impairments, women and particularly Indigenous women (Baldry and Cunneen 2014). As Walters and Longhurst (2017) point out, the over-imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women has drastically increased in the decades since the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In 2017, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women comprised 34 per cent of women behind bars, but only 2 per cent of Australian women (Walters and Longhurst 2017). In New Zealand, Māori people are over-incarcerated, but the disproportionality of Māori in the criminal processing system is particularly pronounced for women (McIntosh 2017).
Yet despite the prevalence of prior victimisation, and despite some efforts within Corrections to shift in this direction, there remains limited trauma-informed care in the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand women’s prison or post-prison settings (Bartels et al. 2020; Stathopoulos and Quadara 2014; McGlue 2016). There is also inadequate substance misuse support (with, often, a failure to acknowledge the links between trauma and substance misuse), and a tendency for Corrections staff to misinterpret trauma responses as bad behaviour (McGlue 2016). Alongside these, there is an institutional culture in prisons that can replicate and reinforce the controlling and traumatising impacts of abuse (Easteal 2001). Thus, while issues of economic, social and political deprivation, abuse, addiction, lack of access to education and employment, and the impacts of colonisation all underpin women’s pathways to incarceration, their welfare needs tend to be redefined by the system as “risk,” and their voices often remain unheard (Bentley 2014, p. 5).

Outline of chapters

This edited collection explores victimisation, criminalisation, the operation of criminal processing systems and alternative possibilities from feminist criminological perspectives. In Chapter 2, “Feminist criminology,” Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour introduces the historical development of feminist criminology and contextualises the development of the discipline in terms of broader developments in the social sciences, as well as the influence of feminist activism and protest. While acknowledging the broader history of feminist criminology, this chapter briefly outlines the distinct character of feminist criminology in the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand context, and highlights the work of key scholars from these countries.
Chapter 3, “Gender and victimology: A necessary pairing,” by Jan Jordan, explores the historical development of victimology and examines how feminist research on women as victims increasingly foregrounded victim/survivor voices and expanded our awareness of the structural factors that shape violence against women. This chapter also explores the ways that criminal justice responses to women’s victimisation have improved, partly in response to feminist critique and activism. However, Jordan emphasises the limitations to law reform, continued barriers to justice and the ongoing challenges for feminist victimology. She invites caution around assuming that the contemporary #MeToo era is “gender aware, equal and reflective of victims’ concerns and perspectives.” In particular, this chapter explores the recent Aotearoa New Zealand case of Jason Trembath, which demonstrates the double standards of court cases in which women’s but not men’s behaviour is scrutinised; in which men’s intoxication is an excuse while women’s intoxication is a failure to keep themselves safe; and in which the power of male peer bonding and protective silence perpetuates gendered violence.
Kate Fitz-Gibbon, in Chapter 4, “Gender, criminal law and violence against women: Mapping the limits of legal interventions and approaches to reform,” explores the male-centric nature of criminal law. Picking up on Jordan’s theme of both the potential and limitations of reforms to the criminal justice system, this chapter explores examples such as partial defences to murder, and recent debates around whether to criminalise coercive control and pornography, in order to highlight the ongoing tensions in the relationship between criminal law and gender, and criminal law’s limitations in responding to gender-based violence. Fitz-Gibbon unpacks how legal defences have developed through a long history of male-centric understandings of the social world, resulting in gendere...

Table of contents