Conclusion

Abstract

Gender instantly assumes greater salience in attempts to understand lethal violence when the perpetrator is a woman. The scholarship has identified differential responses to male and female offending behaviour, noting the dominance of discourses such as pathology, ‘double deviance’, the idea of women as ‘not dangerous’ and the ‘bad woman’ when seeking to explain responses women’s violence. Postcolonial Ireland offers a new background against which to examine these questions. The findings of the analysis herein suggest the ways in which the Irish example demonstrates both convergence and divergence with the existing literature, and presents novel ways of considering women’s lethal violence. Drawing on the previous chapters, the Conclusion seeks to understand women’s lethal violence in Ireland, situating analysis within the broader literature on gender and punishment and women who kill. Seminal ideas, such as ‘double deviance’, are explored in the Irish context, while the confinement of convicted women in religious sites of detention is investigated under a framework of postcolonial penality and religion.