Topic 11 - Gender & Crime

• 5% of prison population is female, 53% of them reported suffering emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
• Heidensohn

  • Women are more controlled through the patriarchal society
  • Oppression at home, work, and in public.
• Adler

  • Liberation thesis - women are committing more crime because equality leads women into more masculine behaviours.
  • Women leaving the domestic sphere gives them the opportunity to commit more white-collar crime.
  • Traits like aggression, assertiveness, and risk taking now apply to women.
• Adler's liberation thesis is criticised by Carlen as studies show that the women who deviate are the most oppressed and vulnerable, not the most liberated. Women's criminality is due to 4 main factors: drug addiction, being brought up in care, poverty, and the quest for excitement.
• Messerschmidt

  • Masculinity is something one can 'do' or 'accomplish'
  • Working class, ethnic minority boys can't express their masculinity through academic success or work, so they turn to crime and violence to gain status.
• Messerschmidt is criticised for stereotyping males, particularly working class and ethnic minority boys. His explanation leaves no room for politically motivated crimes and fails to explain why some of these marginalised boys don't turn to crime.
• Katz

  • Explanations of crime fail to highlight the pleasure derived from it.
  • Crime is motivated by the quest to transgress boredom.
  • 'Sneaky thrills' of shoplifting and 'righteous slaughter' of murder
• Katz is criticised by Merton for not showing the importance of social structure in crime. Crime is a response to the strain between society's goals and a person's ability to achieve them legally.
• Heidensohn

  • Women are more harshly punished than men when committing crimes that contravene the norms and values of femininity - women are 'doubly deviant'
  • E.g. female paedophiles were given harsher sentences than men.
  • Myra Hindley was given longer in prison than men who committed the same crime and was demonised in the press.
• Heidensohn (doubly deviant) is criticised by the fact that women are treated more leniently than men in the chivalry thesis. This may be due to police stereotypes that women are less criminal.