Book Review: “If Women Want Equality of Opportunity They Can Also Have Equality of Punishment”

Abstract

Debates about the nature and extent of women's offending, whether women's crime rates are rising faster than men's and whether women offenders are becoming more masculine (Adler, 1975;Simon, 1975) have been highly contested criminological issues since the 1970s (Box & Hale, 1983). At the turn of the century, in the wake of the antifeminist backlash (Faludi, 1991), arguably a more pertinent, less mediacentric question needs to be addressed: Why is it that there has been a significant increase in women's imprisonment? International research points to the increasing rates of women's imprisonment globally (see, for example, Collins, 1997; Gelsthorpe & Morris, 2002) as a by-product of the so-called gender-blind treatment of women in the criminal justice system. The adage if women "want equality of opportunity they can also have equality of punishment" (van Wormer & Bartollas, 2000, p. 74) seems to be alive and well.What connects the books under review within this article is that they all variously explore, in the American context, (a) the issue of women's imprisonment, (b) how women's imprisonment far from reflects an equality of punishment, and (c) the debate on women's empowerment. Empowerment of women, in turn, is an underlying goal of all three texts. The primary audience for all three books are students from the various disciplines of criminology and social work, and any other students interested in women's involvement in the criminal justice system. Sharp's text is also intended for contemporary feminist criminologists, policy makers, and correctional officers. Each of the books is presented in textbook style, with chapters divided by frequent subheadings; highlighted boxes are used to distinguish important points and examples; and key statistics are listed and bullet pointed. The layout of Sharp, with references at the end of each chapter, instead of being a single list at the end of the book, and without an index, makes it hard to relocate citations and occasional references.Taking the texts in chronological order then, van Wormer and Bartollas have produced a succinct, well-written overview of women in the criminal justice system. From the outset, the 207 Book Review Essays