‘A nuisance to the community’: policing the vagrant woman

Kimber, Julie

doi:10.1080/14443058.2010.498092

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Additionally, homelessness, as today, was also a genuine problem, with colonial commentators observing that Melbourne was inhabited by high numbers of female beggars, most of which were concentrated among the very young and very old but could be found resident in the city year after year (Freeman 1888: 133). Contrariwise, Julie Kimber (2010) has suggested that in rural towns in Australia vagrancy charges were historically used as a means of moving 'problem' women (notably drunkards or sex workers) on to other areas.…”

Section: Offence Profiles Of Female Prisoners In Urban and Rural Victmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imprisonment of Female Urban and Rural Offenders in Victoria, 1860-1920

Nagy

Piper

2019

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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This paper examines imprisonment data from Victoria between 1860 and 1920 to gather insights into the variations in incidence of women being convicted by rural versus urban courts, including close focus on the difference in types of offences being committed in urban and rural locations. This paper also details women’s mobility between both communities as well as change in their offending profiles based on their geographic locations. Our findings suggest that while the authorities were broadly most concerned with removing disorderly and vagrant women from both urban and rural streets, rural offending had its own characteristics that differentiate it from urban offending. Therefore, this demonstrates that when examining female offending, geographic location of an offender and offence must be taken into consideration.

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Section: Offence Profiles Of Female Prisoners In Urban and Rural Victmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imprisonment of Female Urban and Rural Offenders in Victoria, 1860-1920

Nagy

Piper

2019

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

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“…As Julie Kimber's work on vagrants in New South Wales attests, the different Police Acts criminalised those "trapped in public cycles of poverty". 60 Vagrancy laws were used as a means to force people to work and contribute meaningfully to society in terms of their labour. Men and women were labelled as vagrants if they were shown to have no lawful means of support; begging; frequenting places with thieves and common prostitutes; or acting in a riotous or indecent manner.…”

Section: Maintaining the Social Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…72 Women who committed offences against good order were marginalised through regular crime reports. 73 Individual crime reports about women appearing before the Perth and Fremantle Police Courts ranged anywhere from thirty to a hundred words in length, depending on the evidence given in court and general interest around the case. A key part of my analysis of female offenders and the press is how they were constructed in court reports.…”

Section: Court Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The worst female character”: Criminal underclass women in Perth and Fremantle, 1900–1939

Straw

2013

Journal of Australian Studies

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“…What, though, of its gendered dimensions? The mobility of women is often (mis)understood as a threat, both historically (Cresswell ; Domosh ; Kimber ) and more contemporaneously in the 20th (McDowell ) and 21st centuries (Hanson ; Silvey ). While geographers have charted the mobility of female travellers through diaries, letters and films (Blunt ; Domosh ; Maddrell ; Robinson ; Russell ), less has been said of more deviant female mobility (but see some examples in the work of Casey et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missing women: policing absence

Stevenson

Parr²,

Woolnough

2016

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper considers the neglected mobilities associated with a sample of UK women reported as missing. Refracted through literatures on gendered mobility and abandonment, the paper argues that the journeys of these women in crisis are not well understood by police services, and that normative gender relations may infuse their management. By selectively exploring one illustrative police case file on Kim, we highlight how reported and observed socio-spatial relationships within private and public spaces relate to search actions. We argue that Kim's mobility and spatial experiences are barely understood, except for when they appear to symbolise disorder and danger. We address the silences in this singular case by using the voices of other women reported as missing, as collected in a research project to explore the agency, experience and meaning of female mobility during absence. We argue that women reported as missing are not abandoned by UK policing services, but that a policy of continued search for them may be at risk if they repeatedly contravene normative socio-spatial relationships through regular absence mobilities. By way of conclusion, we address recent calls for research that explores the relationships between gender and mobility.

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‘A nuisance to the community’: policing the vagrant woman

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Imprisonment of Female Urban and Rural Offenders in Victoria, 1860-1920

Imprisonment of Female Urban and Rural Offenders in Victoria, 1860-1920

“The worst female character”: Criminal underclass women in Perth and Fremantle, 1900–1939

Missing women: policing absence

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