Criminalizing Vulnerability

Abstract

Singh, SFCriminalising vulnerability: Protecting 'vulnerable' children and punishing 'wicked' mothers http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/6298/ Article LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain.The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. AbstractThis article aims to uncover how, in attempting to ameliorate the vulnerability of children, the offence of 'causing or allowing the death of the child' criminalises abused mothers. It explores how, in the courtroom, tropes of female criminality and constructs of the 'bad' mother are mobilised in ways that are both gendered and 'classed'. The effect is to silence female defendants, deprive their actions of context, and deny them agency. This argument has implications for assessing the moral and legal culpability of abused women who fail to protect their children, because it shifts the focus onto how the abuser has exploited and exacerbated the vulnerability of both mother and child. This approach also challenges law's preoccupation with scrutinising (and punishing) women who do not adhere to a glorified, middle class ideal of motherhood. More broadly, by focusing on the context of a woman's alleged 'failure', there opens a space within legal discourse to refute the characterisation of female criminality as being either 'mad' or 'bad', and of women who engage in criminal behaviour as being either 'virgins' or 'whores'. Finally, in focusing on vulnerability as a universal and unavoidable part of the human experience, gendered assumptions of autonomy and the self/other dichotomy are challenged. Keywords'causing or allowing the death of a child', 'failure to protect', mothers, domestic abuse, vulnerability, agency

The Vulnerable (M)other and the Autonomous Legal Subject: Rethinking Vulnerability in Criminal Law

“…Moreover, as the criminal legal subject reflects male experiences and motivations, the female criminal subject is denied agency in the courtroom. When on trial, abstract tropes of female criminality based on performance of femininity (including safety work) determine whether women are convicted or acquitted (Singh, 2017). Even where women are victims (or witnesses), conformity to those roles determines whether they are deemed credible and/or deserving of retribution or feckless to the extent that they are ultimately blamed for their own victimisation.…”

“…Drawing on Fineman's theory of vulnerability, I argue that expanding criminal liability of women who fail to protect their children results from the feminisation of vulnerability, and the consequent responsibilisation of women to manage and avoid risk of male violence (towards themselves and their children). Having demonstrated in previous work the potential of vulnerability theory to challenge gendered tropes which deny women agency when on trial, this article takes up this theory in more depth, exploring what may be gained by replacing the autonomous criminal subject with the vulnerable criminal subject (Singh, 2017).…”