Carlen

• Writing from a Feminist perspective
• Method: In-Depth, Unstructured interviews with 39 women (number of them were in prison or youth custody at the time).
• Studied a group of mainly working class women between 15 and 46 years old that have been convicted of one or more crimes. 
• Uses control theory (how people are controlled). 
• Assumes that humans are not naturally good or bad but will make a rational decision to turn to rime when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. 
• Believes that working class women have been controlled through the promise of rewards (money and love). 
• Class deal - women get consumer goods in return for their wage.
• Gender deal - the psychological and material rewards offered by the male breadwinners in return for the women's love and domestic labour. 
• If gender deal and class deal are not available or are illusory (fake) then crime is a good alternative for them. 
• If women don’t have a legal way of earning a good living, they will feel powerless, oppressed and victims of injustice. 
• Some of the women in this study had always lived in poverty and thought that they had nothing to lose so used crime to try and escape it. 
• Believes that criminal behaviour is more likely when social control breaks down.