Women Who Offend

Gill McIvor

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781846420412
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Presenting research that will underpin effective practice with women who offend, this unique and thought-provoking text aims to help professionals meet the needs of this group as well as providing a theoretical resource for policy makers and academics. The authors, coming from a variety of professional and research perspectives, discuss important issues concerning women in the criminal justice system, including:

* the increase in custodial sentences for women

* black women in prison

* patterns of female offending

* drug use and the criminal justice system

* the needs of women on release from prison.

Calling into question the relevance to female offenders of research conducted with men who commit crime, the contributors provide a comprehensive knowledge base on women and crime for professionals who work in this area. With a broad range of contributions, this book will be helpful to probation officers, social workers, policy makers and others who work with female offenders.

PART I

Female Offending and Responses to It

CHAPTER 1

Female Offending

A Theoretical Overview

Loraine Gelsthorpe

Introduction

This chapter is concerned with pathways into crime and the explanations for women’s involvement in crime, but the most obvious starting point is what we know about women’s involvement in crime. One of the most persistent and universal findings in criminological research has been that women commit less crime than men. Indeed, while criminal convictions in England and Wales are relatively common for males they are still unusual for females (Home Office 2001). In Scotland too, women constitute a relatively small percentage of the criminal cases coming before the courts and the same situation pertains in Northern Ireland. Such findings are not uncommon across the world (Steffensmeier and Allan 1996).

There are, however, some interesting historical fluctuations in the amount of crime committed by females; for instance, there was a surge in the prosecution of females in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, resulting in a unique moment of female domination among recorded offenders (Beattie 1995), but for the most part women’s involvement in crime has been lower than men’s. In the twenty-first century this claim perhaps requires further analysis and qualification because of the social transformations brought about by late modernity (Giddens 1990). Perceptions of increased crime among women have perhaps never been greater, at least within the media, and the burgeoning prison population (Gelsthorpe and Morris 2002) seemingly supports such perceptions. But the situation is more complex than this and it is important to separate out public, media and criminal justice system responses to women who commit crimes from the actualities of involvement.

Following an extensive self-report survey of over 2500 young people, Graham and Bowling (1995) indicate that an increasing number of young women are lured by crime and drug use. Every other male and every third female in their sample admitted to committing offences and the same numbers admitted using drugs at some time. More recent studies rehearse similar arguments. Flood-Page et al. (2000) carried out a youth lifestyle survey in 1998 to 1999 as a development of the 1998 British Crime Survey. From nearly 5000 young people aged 12 to 30 (with a response rate of 69%) they learned that almost a fifth (19%) admitted to one or more offences in the previous 12 months, though males (26%) were more likely to admit offending than females (11%). In Jamieson, McIvor and Murray’s (1999) Scottish study, using a slightly broader definition of offences than in the studies by Graham and Bowling and Flood-Page et al., the majority of boys and girls between 14 and 15 years of age admitted to having committed an offence in the previous 12 months, though the incidence of offending was higher among the boys (85% compared with 67% of girls). Thus a reassessment of females’ involvement in crime is important, but there is nothing here to suggest that the overall picture is changing. Indeed, from self-report studies such as these we learn that although there may be more females involved in crime than hitherto (or at least more reporting involvement) the basic male/female discrepancy in rates of involvement in crime pertains.

Another key question is whether women and men commit the same kinds of crimes. While offenders such as Myra Hindley and Rose West have attracted enormous media and public attention because of the commission of sexual crimes and violent murders, and while female offenders over 21 years are found in all other offence types (ranging from burglary, robbery, criminal damage, and drug offences to motoring offences, for instance), they form a numerical majority in only two: offences relating to prostitution and failing to pay for a television licence. When women are convicted it is more likely to be for offences involving theft and handling stolen goods, drug offences, and fraud and forgery than anything else (see also Chapter 2 this volume). Women seem to have lower rates of involvement in murder, serious violence and professional crime. In none of the categories does the female share reach even half the total (Home Office 1999). Developmental studies on crime and delinquency seem to support the general claim that women’s crime broadly reflects the same pattern of men’s crime, however, noting that the gender gap is more a question of differences in the degree of participation, frequency and variety, than in types of behaviour (Loeber et al. 1993).

Theories of women’s offending

At once we can learn that the differential involvement in crime between males and females goes beyond official processing and agency responses and is still there even when looking at self-report studies. We learn that female ‘criminal careers’ are perhaps shorter than those of their male counterparts, and with some guidance as to the kinds of crimes that women typically commit we can begin to see that there might be distinctive reasons why males and females become involved in crime in the first place, not to mention distinctive pathways out of crime (McIvor, Jamieson and Murray forthcoming).

Interestingly, however, there has been relatively little theorising about women and crime and this point is as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century. Rather, it is often the case that theories put forward to explain men’s crime have been presented as general theories of crime and have included women without real questioning as to whether or not this is appropriate (Heidensohn 1996). Barbara Wootton’s early plea for more research into sex differences in crime has oft been repeated (1959, p.318).

While criminological theorising about crime and pathways into crime has been abundant then, criminology has seemingly had almost nothing to say of interest or importance about women. Whether this reflects the apparent rarity of the female offender, simple neglect, sexism on the part of theorists, or some other reason it is difficult to say, but it has meant that the trajectory of theories relating to women has been unusually conservative (Leonard 1982; Morris 1987; Smart 1976). In addition to outlining some of these conservative theories and highlighting some critical theoretical developments, with brief examples along the way I conclude with some contemporary understandings of women’s pathways into crime.

Biological theories

Early theorists argued that the true nature of women was antithetical to crime. Reflecting dominant ideas about biological determinism, epitomised in Freud’s widely quoted phrase ‘anatomy is destiny’ (1924, p.178)¹ it was thought that criminality was linked to ‘maleness’ and ‘masculine’ traits such as aggression and physicality. Cesare Lombroso, one of the most influential of the biological theorists, analysed the physical characteristics of prisoners and concluded that offenders were atavistic – throwbacks to a more primitive evolutionary stage of development. With William Ferrero, Lombroso asserted that women were even less evolved than men and that female criminality resulted from biological inferiority (Lombroso and Ferrero 1895). As a result of this she was seen as ‘doubly deviant’, both biologically and socially, for she was anomalous compared with other typically male offenders, and as a woman she was ‘odd’ because she was acting against her biological nature. If crime were to be explained by primitive traits, of course, we might expect women to commit more crime than men. Lombroso explains this apparent anomaly by arguing that prostitution was the female substitution for crime and by attributing the lower crime rate of women to their proximity to lower life forms (being less intelligent, they could not commit as much crime as men). (See Smart 1976 and Williams 1991, for a fuller explanation of early biological theories.)

Some modern theorists have continued this line of thinking, imagining that there are essential biological differences which account for differential involvement in crime. In their review of differences between men and women Maccoby and Jacklin (1975) highlight that the main differences which stood up to testing were aggression, verbal ability and spatial or mathematical ability. They argue that men are more aggressive than women in all human societies for which evidence is available; that such differences are found in early infancy; that levels of aggression are straightforwardly related to levels of sex hormones and that similar differences in aggression exist in all subhuman primates. Each of these points can be questioned, however. Criticisms include the fact that notions of natural ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ behaviour are culturally bound, that socialisation begins at birth (if not before), that not only do men and women have ‘male’ and ‘female’ hormones, but hormone levels vary for any one person in moments of stress and at different times in life, and hormone levels can be stimulated according to social situations. Thus aggressive behaviour can affect the production of testosterone (the so-called ‘male’ hormone). (See Caplan 1975 for a critique of ‘sex difference’ research.)

Thus each of Maccoby and Jacklin’s arguments can be put aside, but belief in the biological basis of differences in aggression remains strong. Wilson and Herrnstein, for example, conclude their discussion by arguing that while aggression is often situationally controlled and the forms which it takes are shaped by social learning, ‘the durability, universality and generality of the relative aggressiveness of males cannot plausibly be blamed entirely on arbitrary sex roles’ (1985, p.121). They believe that constitutional (that is, biological) sex differences in aggression are of a magnitude sufficient not only to explain differences in the commission of violent crime, but possibly also in the commission of crime generally.

A further notable strand to the biology and crime debate has revolved around menstruation and crime. The main advocate of a link between menstruation and crime is Katherina Dalton (1961, 1977). Dalton interviewed incarcerated women, obtaining information about their menstrual cycles. From their self-reported information, Dalton calculated that the women’s menstrual cycle phases occurred at the times their crimes were committed. A number of studies followed, with sometimes contradictory results (Epps 1962; Horney 1978) and it should be noted that methodological problems have led other researchers to question the results which point to a link between menstrual cycles and crime – largely because of inaccuracies in self-reported menstrual cycles and because social context can influence the onset and cessation of menstruation. Nevertheless, it is clear that the law has taken such generative phases as menstruation and the menopause into account in some cases (Edwards 1988). In similar vein it has been suggested that there are links between post-natal depression and crime (especially infanticide). Put simply, it is thought that as the female body fluctuates in terms of hormonal activity, women may engage in a wide variety of antisocial and criminal activity (see Smart 1976).

Some theorists (for example, Otto Pollak 1961) have addressed female criminality in terms of physiological differences between the sexes. Pollak thought that because women are capable of concealing sexual arousal (unlike men) they are inherently deceitful and manipulative. In this way, they are likely to conceal the true nature of their offending behaviour. Other research on women and crime includes biological and neurological studies which explore hereditary factors (through family, twin and adoption studies for example; see Widom and Ames 1988).

In many theoretical overviews, biological approaches to antisocial behaviour are either ignored or vilified, rightly so in many cases (cf. Brown 1990). It is certainly the case that arguments that there is a single biological factor or genetic predisposition which produces criminal behaviour would be shortsighted. Nevertheless, from recent research findings it is possible that biological factors are involved in the aetiology of at least some antisocial behaviour. It is widely thought that early central nervous system trauma may contribute to the development of antisocial or criminal behaviour for instance (Widom and Ames 1988). We might add that there has been surprisingly little research on psychophysiological factors, but one promising avenue of research appears to be the relation between the personality trait of sensation seeking and the physiological/biological phenomena associated with it (Zuckerman 1994).

Psychological theories

Psychological theories of crime emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century in conjunction with the development of medical models of crime and deviance. Proponents of early psychological theories attributed criminality to mental disease or defect that could be treated and potentially cured through the assistance of psychologists and/or psychiatrists. Interestingly, psychological dysfunction among women was often thought to have a biological basis. For example, nineteenth-century explanations for kleptomania attributed women’s shoplifting to a mental disease associated with reproductive functions. Sigmund Freud (1933) attributed women’s deviance to their inability psychologically to adjust to their...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One: Female Offending and Responses to It
• Part Two: Women in the Criminal Justice System
• Part Three: Contemporary Issues
• The Contributors
• Subject Index
• Author Index