Female Violent Offenders: Moral Panics or More Serious Offenders?

Abstract

N early 40 years ago, in research conducted for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Ward and his colleagues, asked 'Are women more aggressive in committing violent crimes today than in the past?' The reason they asked this question, and others have continued to, is the common fear that women, as the putative gatekeepers of social morality, are changing. Using data from the same prison Ward and his colleagues relied on to document the nature of women's violent offences, we examine whether and how the characteristics and crimes of incarcerated female offenders have changed. In so doing, we also seek to explain observed patterns of stability and change over the last third of the 20th century in women's crimes of violence and the moral panics that circumscribe violent criminality by women.

Exploring Sex Differences among Sentenced Juvenile Offenders in Australia

“…The need for an improved understanding of the diversity in female juvenile offenders is made more imperative by recent observations in the US, UK, Canada, and especially Australia that the gender gap in juvenile violent offending has narrowed (Holmes, 2010;Kong & AuCoin, 2008;Snyder & Sickmund, 1999;Zahn et al, 2008). While there is a lack of agreement about the causes of these trends (Kruttschnitt, Gartner, & Hussemann, 2008), they have led to questions about the possibility of a change in the nature of female juvenile offending, or more specifically that females may be becoming more violent (Alder & Worrall, 2004). Perhaps most importantly, an understanding of the possible diversity among female offenders has implications for all stages of criminal justice intervention, whereas in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the tendency has been to treat female juvenile offenders as a homogenous group (Hoyt & Scherer, 1998;Odgers et al, 2007).…”

Women convicted for violent offenses: Adverse childhood experiences, low level of education and poor mental health

“…For both male and female adult offenders, we can see the predominance of property and drug offenses [ 12 , 13 ], but it appears that the gender gap is greatest for violent offenses: Women generally seem to have much lower crime rates for violent offending than men [ 3 , 7 , 15 - 18 ]. While some researchers have found an indication towards an increase of female violent offending [ 4 , 19 ] others claim that the rate of female violent crime has remained stable [ 3 , 5 ].…”

BABYSITTER KILLERS ANDDAUGHTERS OF DEATH

“…By 1994, such arguments could be recruited to debates surrounding the feminism and criminality: in 'Killer Carers', Alix Kirsta argues that 'if society continues to persuade women that their sole access to real power lies in motherhood*and women continue to be persuaded of this*then some will certainly go on to abuse that power' (Kirsta 1994, 271). This echoes under the guise of feminism the debates linking women's increased agency with a rise in criminality that has generated much critical discussion since the mid-1970s (Adler 1975;Mukherjee and Fitzgerald 1981;Naffine 1997;Carrington 2006;Kruttschnitt, Gartner, and Hussemann 2008). A negative spectre of feminine empowerment, while undeveloped, haunts Moffitt's account of a mother's renunciation of the care of children to others, implicitly through entry into the workforce, reinforced by the irresponsible exercise of that power by teenage girls.…”