Abstract
The research on violent female offending has focused primarily on homicide, particularly on women in abusive relationships who kill their victimiser. The present article is based on five empirical studies presented as a doctoral thesis. The aim was to examine the personality, background and life experiences of violent female offenders, as well as the relationship between the offender and her victim and to identify psychological risk markers for violent offending in females. A nation-wide sample of 61 violent female offenders was compared with a matched group of 30 female non-offenders by means of a structured interview, the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID-II) for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), the Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS), the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R). The overall results revealed that the perpetrator can be characterised as having an antisocial personality disorder with comorbid substance abuse and limited capacity to deal with difficulties. Furthermore, the view that female violence is a reaction to victimisation, particularly by an intimate partner, was not supported.
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