Criminal Women Research Articles

Denied, Disrespected, Doubted, and Discarded: Women's Criminal Convictions and Experiences of Discrimination

Denied, Disrespected, Doubted, and Discarded: Women's Criminal Convictions and Experiences of Discrimination

Book review: Criminal Women: Gender Matters

Book review: Criminal Women: Gender Matters

Identifying Patterns/Drivers in Women Criminals

The general notion of women, who are usually regarded as caregivers and nurturers, can kill in cold blood is difficult to accept in Indian society. Despite the belief that murders are mostly male-perpetrated, women are often also culprits, killing with the same heartlessness as any male killer. As is the case with other aspects of life, it is often seen that the motivations of women killers are different from their male peers. While many male criminals are driven by sadism, sex, violence and lust, women's motivations are found to be mostly economic in nature. Predominantly many Motives are common, to both genders are greed and mental imbalance. This present paper is an attempt to study different aspects of women criminal with parameters or drivers such as Education, Family Background, Social Status, Personal life, and any history of sufferings Mentally or Physically. This paper also focuses on various Modus Operandi adopted by Such Women. The Study will help Criminologist and Forensic Psychologist to understand the reason why a woman who is supposed to be caregiver is able to take away the life in cruel manner. The study will help to prevent / handle such women from committing such offences by Knowing the psychology and motive behind a criminal mind. Keywords: Forensic Psychology, women, female criminals, murders

The Criminalisation of Women in Joint Enterprise Cases: Exposing the Limits to ‘Serving’ Girls and Women Justice

This paper reports original evidence about the experiences of 109 girls and women criminalised in England and Wales under the controversial legal doctrine of joint enterprise (JE). Over three-quarters of the women were convicted of murder or manslaughter. Yet, in no cases was evidence presented that the girl or woman used a deadly weapon. In 90% of the cases, the defendants engaged in no violence at all, and in nearly half of the cases, they were not present at the scene of the violent incident. In seeking to make sense of these findings, JE becomes a lens through which we can conceptualise gendered processes of criminalisation. Decisions to charge women that reflect strategic approaches to policing and prosecuting some forms of violence and harm, alongside prosecution and defence strategies used in the courtroom that reproduce patriarchy, class stigma and racism, will be explored. Simultaneously, the criminalising processes actively obscure and silence the wider context and personal histories of the lives of girls and women, which once surfaced, expose wider tensions in addressing all harms to deliver justice for women.

Community Perception Towards Criminal Women: A Case Study of District Swabi

Women who engage in criminal activities often face a complex set of challenges that go beyond the legal consequences of their actions. Society's perception of criminal women is often harsherthan that of their male counterparts, as women are traditionally viewed as caregivers and nurturers rather than as criminals. This perception is shaped by cultural and social norms, media representation,and individual biases. In this essay, we will explore the community's perception towards criminal women and the factors that influence it. These representations contribute to the stigmatization of criminal women, making it more difficult for them to reintegrate into society after serving their sentences. In this research, it is discussed how women in society are forced to commit a crime and what are the factors which make them do so. One of the factors that shape community perception towards criminal women is the nature of their offences. Women who engage in violent crimes are often viewed as more dangerous and threatening than those who commit non-violent offences.

Monstruous Mothers and Dead Girls in Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Gone Girl

This article explores two predominant images of Gillian Flynn’s female characters: the monstrous mother and the missing/dead girl. These two representations of Flynn’s female characters showcase the link between female criminality and transgression on the one hand, and the female characters’ traumatic history and family dysfunctionality on the other. This article argues that Flynn’s use of these two tropes reveals the conflicting facets of female crime, victimhood, and agency in her thrillers, and by so doing her work subverts the murky domain of the portrayal of criminal women in relation to motherhood, mental illness and trauma.

"Impulsive insanity" according to Emil Kraepelin : Aclinical framework for female criminals at the beginning of the twentieth century

In his comprehensive classification of the beginning of the twentieth century, Emil Kraepelin provided adetailed description of an entity he called "impulsive insanity", which had not been elaborated before him. The forms depicted by him largely corresponded to the offences, which were referred to as typically female in their nature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How did Kraepelin classify "impulsive insanity" and what forms did he describe? Did Kraepelin also see these disorders predominantly prevailing in women, did he establish aconnection with women's criminality and how did this fit into the discourses of the time on femininity, criminal legislation and degeneration? This study focused on the clinical picture "impulsive insanity" as described by Emil Kraepelin in his main work, the 8th edition of his Textbook of Psychiatry published between 1909 and 1915. His description was analyzed in detail and embedded in ahistorical context on the basis of secondary literature. In rudiments Kraepelin's clinical classification is still comprehensible today, although there are major differences to how literature in later years treated this issue. Kraepelin clearly sees "impulsive insanity" as adriving disorder predominantly prevailing in women. Elaborating his concept of "impulsive insanity", Kraepelin positioned himself in relation to important scientific discourses of the early twentieth century, such as the debate on criminal legislation and the theory of degeneration. On the basis of the individual forms of "impulsive insanity" described by Kraepelin, various concepts of constructing and pathologizing femininity can be identified. Apparently, it also aims to explain common female crimes within the patriarchal hegemony.

History of Menstrual Injustice

Abstract
 This research paper lies at the intersection of criminal justice, human rights, public health, and women, gender, and sexuality studies. Written for the 2021 Barnard major track History of the Present, this paper details the contemporary history of American mass incarceration as well as exposes the blatant human rights injustices and health concerns of the experience of carceral menstruation. As women's incarceration, and Black women's incarceration in particular, has increased more than any other demographic in recent years, menstruation behind bars has become a pertinent and absolutely necessary experience to discuss and improve. Abhorrent policies in jails and prisons have forced upon prisoners with periods highly unsanitary and unjust menstruation experiences, an example of the prison industrial complex's blatant and inhumane disregard for bodily autonomy.

Alone on an Island

Malta is a small predominantly Catholic island-nation in the Mediterranean ocean and there is a complete ban on abortion in the country – there are no exemptions for rape, incest, fetal anomalies, or to save a pregnant woman’s life. Both medical and surgical abortions are illegal and women choosing to end pregnancies have often sought to have abortion care outside of Malta, traveling primarily abroad at great personal cost. Medical care in Malta is otherwise free at the point of care. Options for the care are extremely limited as there is great public support for the Maltese abortion ban. As the government of Malta imposed travel restriction in the interest of containing spread of SARS-CoV2, women faced further limitations in their ability to access safe, effective abortion care in other countries. Many women have ordered medications online and have self-managed their abortion care. Women who have had abortions or people who facilitate abortions in Malta do face criminal charges and women who seek medical management of complications of self-managed abortions do so where the potential of charges exists. Denying women access to safe and private abortion care has the potential to cause significant physical, psychological, and social effects and unfairly harms those who are experiencing unwanted pregnancy. Given the global COVID pandemic, the Maltese government has a responsibility to ensure access to safe abortion care whether abroad or self-managed and such care should be decriminalized.

Étude des vécus de violences à l’encontre des femmes criminelles

BackgroundWomen constitute around 17% of criminal offenders. However, few studies have addressed criminality in females. The current study aims to determine the prevalence of violence inflicted upon a sample of 91 female criminals during their adult life and compare it to the general female population, in order to provide a better understanding of female crime. MaterialData was collected, between 2014 and 2019, from the criminal expertise files of an expert at the Rennes Court of Appeal for women aged over 15. History of violence experienced as defined by the WHO criteria, where included. ResultsNinety-one criminal expertise files were included. The prevalence of violence experienced during adulthood was 57.1%, a prevalence significantly higher than that of the general European and international female population. Furthermore, these women reported experiences of violence independently of their age in 76.1% of cases. ConclusionOur study highlights an important prevalence of experiences of violence in the life course of criminal women. This victimization appears to be closely related to criminality in women and seems to be a key point in understanding female criminality. In addition, psychiatric disorders are frequent in this population and are over-represented by substance use and personality disorders. The latter two disorders appear to be conditioned by a history of experienced violence, seem associated with crime and to increase the risk of committing a violent act. Therefore, experiences of violence seem to be a predisposing factor to the development of medico-legal issues.

The Persistent Impact of Childhood Trauma: Current Mental Health Challenges Faced by Women in Jail

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between childhood trauma and current mental health status of 110 women incarcerated in a Midwestern jail. The K6 distress scale was used to assess current mental health status. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) scale was utilized to measure traumatic events occurring in childhood. The percentage of women identified as having serious psychological distress exceeded rates found in the extant literature involving criminal justice-involved women. Women reporting more ACEs scored significantly higher on the K6. Additionally, women with higher K6 scores forecast a greater likelihood of arrest post-release, were older, had been in jail fewer times, were in jail for a longer time when interviewed, and were more likely to be mothers of minor children. These findings support the need for gender-responsive treatment and trauma-informed care to address mental health challenges among women in jail.

Better Together? Intimate Partner Effects on Offending Women

The role of marriage has been extensively studied for its positive impacts on male desistance. However, the role of romantic partners for women is less understood. Do partners exert a prosocial “protective” effect or are they criminogenic? The present study empirically drills down on this question. Specifically, we assess the character and quality of romantic relationships on substance use and illegitimate income using a sample of incarcerated women. Drawing from social control, social learning, and strain theory, we hypothesize that the effects of both being in and breaking up from a relationship on illicit behavior are conditional on the quality of the relationship and behavior/characteristics of the partner. Using data from the Women’s Experience of Violence (WEV) project, consisting of a custodial sample of criminal justice-involved women (N = 770), we examine how relationship status and quality, as well as partner offending, influence drug use and illicit earnings. A series of multi-level random effects models are estimated to explore how within-person changes in relationship/breakup status are related to changes in the two dependent variables. Contrary to expectations, we find that romantic dissolution (of either a high- or low-quality relationship) does not negatively impact this sample of women and that being in a high-quality relationship is not a protective factor, as has been found often in male samples. Findings suggest partner behavior may be more important than the quality of the relationship with the partner. Our results link drug use and participation in the illicit economy to factors mostly outside of a woman’s relationship status and quality, thereby challenging some commonly understood mechanisms of desistance.

The Role of Women in the Timurian Civilization

In the Timurians period, the position of women of the lower classes in general is not worthy and dignified, but the position of women of the upper classes of society was important and obvious in some cases. In the Timurians patriarchal system, there was freedom for queens and women belonging to the Timurians court. A number of Timurians women could be involved in politics and other petty matters. In the pardon section, the pardon of criminal women in the Timurians period played a good role, but on the contrary, in some cases, for the Timurians women acted very strictly like a cold heart, as well as women in this period, like in previous eras, were bound and obedient to men. The ambiguous social situation and blind perceptions regarding of women, which have a very long history in the east and eastern cultures, also influenced the cultural atmosphere of Herat province at that time. Education was based on religious orders and the influence of religion was considered in all aspects of life and society. So, with the exception of a small group of women belonging to the affluent levels of society, the rest of the women of the society lived their lives in a bad situation. But what is important that can be considered and observed/pause in this period are the influence of court women in politics and in other important affairs that show the prominence of this period with previous periods.

"Steal or Starve": Black Women's Criminal Work in New York City, 1893 to 1914

"Steal or Starve": Black Women's Criminal Work in New York City, 1893 to 1914

Shipping Fools: Foucault’s Wandering Madman and Civic Responsibility in Late Medieval Germany

Abstract Few aspects of Michel Foucault’s seminal study The History of Madness have been more widely derided and debunked than Foucault’s assertion that medieval mad persons sailed the rivers of Europe as a kind of real-world counterpart to the literary and artistic trope of the ship of fools. But while Foucault was not correct in many of his assumptions, he also was not entirely wrong to draw attention to the river. Based on archival research in Nuremberg, Munich, and Frankfurt, this article offers a critical insight into how some medieval cities managed their problematic mad. In particular, it uncovers the widespread and little-understood practice of expelling the mad from late medieval German towns. It argues that the practice of expulsion was multilayered, ranging from relatively benign trips to convey a mad person back home, to official banishments of criminal mad men and women. It finds that most of the expelled mad, however, were simply sent away, out of the city walls and away from municipal responsibility. These expulsions appear frequently in fifteenth-century records and reveal that one particular kind of route was preferred by cities in Southern Germany: the river. In fact, municipal leaders routinely used the Danube, the Isar, and the Main rivers as the best way to rid their towns of difficult or friendless mad persons. While such river journeys did not take place on “ships of fools,” the river was thus a critical and meaningful part of the geographic and cultural landscapes of madness.

”Jag kunde bara slåss” Förklaringar och vändningar i tidigare kriminella kvinnors personliga berättelser

”Fighting was the only thing I was good at”– Accounts and biographical turns in previously criminal women’s personal storiesToday’s narrative criminology offers a more nuanced approach to understanding crime than many previous approaches. In this article we draw on personal stories from four middle-aged women with criminal experiences to explore some analytic tracks in this area. First, we show how recognizable sad tales, employed by the women to account for previous crimes and drug use, are supplemented by incorporated aspects of happy tales, as well as reflexive markers of storytelling and ”accounts of accounts”. The women identify their formerly active neutralizations, and they account for why they used them. Second, we refine an analysis of biographical turning points by focusing details that complicate the points at issue. Life changes are narrated as more uncertain, oscillating, long lasting and educational than might be expected. ”Doing motherhood” and a Meadian story of taking the role of the other are conspicuous; the narrators try to depict their lives from their children’s point of view. Having a child and, eventually, caring for it is attributed a life changing significance.

Receipt of pharmacotherapy for alcohol use disorder by justice-involved women in the Veterans Health Administration

BackgroundAlcohol use disorder (AUD) and unhealthy drinking are prevalent among women involved in the criminal justice system and women military veterans. Pharmacotherapy—including naltrexone, topiramate, acamprosate, and disulfiram—for AUD is one form of effective treatment that is associated with better health and criminal justice outcomes. The current study examined the association of justice involvement with receipt of pharmacotherapy for AUD, as well as other patient factors that may explain variation in receipt of pharmacotherapy for AUD among women veterans who receive care at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities.MethodsUsing national VHA clinical records, we examined all women VHA patients who received an AUD diagnosis during an outpatient or inpatient visit in fiscal years (FY) 2014–2017. We compared patient characteristics by justice status, defined as contact with one of the VHA’s justice outreach programs, and used a mixed-effects logistic regression model to test whether justice involvement was independently associated with odds of receiving pharmacotherapy for AUD.ResultsOf 10,511 women veterans diagnosed with AUD in FY2017, 852 (8%) met our definition of justice-involved. Since FY2014, the percentage of women veterans who received pharmacotherapy for AUD increased (14–21%). Women justice-involved veterans and those who were homeless had higher odds of receiving pharmacotherapy for AUD (OR 1.29, CI 1.15–1.45; OR 1.35, CI 1.25–1.47). Women veterans age 55 or older or who were African-American had lower odds of receiving pharmacotherapy (OR 0.74, CI 0.67–0.82; OR 0.73, CI 0.68–0.79).ConclusionsWhile women involved in the criminal justice system face many barriers to accessing health and social services, women justice-involved veterans had higher odds of receiving pharmacotherapy for AUD at VHA facilities compared to women veterans with no justice involvement. Legal mandates and supportive programming directed towards veterans in the criminal justice system may explain the higher rate of receipt of pharmacotherapy observed among justice-involved women veterans. Women veterans who are homeless may also have more opportunities to access and use pharmacotherapy for AUD compared to their housed counterparts.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’un Lady Audley’nın Sırrı Başlıklı Romanında Feminist Çelişki

1860ların sansasyonel romanları, alışılmadık ve sıradışı kadın karakterleri nedeniyle yazıldıkları dönemde hararetli tartışmaların çıkmasına neden olmuştur. Çünkü, bu romanlar daha çok kadın okur kitlesine hitap etmiş ve zina yapan, iki eşli ya da bir şekilde suça bulaşmış kadın karakterlerin kadın okurlar üzerindeki olası etkileri edebi çevreleri endişelendirmiştir. Öte yandan, yirminci yüzyıl feminist edebi eleştirmenler bu olağandışı ve tartışmalı kadın temsiliyetini feminist uyanışın dönem edebiyatındaki yansıması olarak yorumlama eğilimi göstermişlerdir. Fakat, bunun tam tersi yaklaşımlardan bahsetmek de mümkün. Örneğin, cinsel, sosyal ve kültürel normların dışına çıkan kadın karakterlerin romanlarda cezalandırıldığı ve disipline edildiğine vurgu yapan farklı okumalar de bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın yaklaşımı ikinci görüşe daha yakındır. Bu makale anlatılardaki feminist içeriğin aslında anti-feminist bir bakış açısı ile ele alındığına vurgu yapmayı amaçlar. Bunun için sansasyonel roman türünün en iyi örneklerinden kabul edilen Mary Elizabeth Braddon’ın Lady Audley’nin Sırrı (1862) başlıklı romanının detaylı okuması sunulacaktır.

Formative Concept of ‘Women Criminality' in Sexual Assault under IPC and POCSO: An Investigation into Judicial Decisions and Legislative Initiatives

Formative Concept of ‘Women Criminality' in Sexual Assault under IPC and POCSO: An Investigation into Judicial Decisions and Legislative Initiatives

(In)famous subjects: representing women's criminality and violence in historical biofictions

ABSTRACTHistorical fiction writers can be drawn to the true stories of women who have committed violent or criminal acts, as are readers. Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace and Hannah Kent's Burial Rites are popular, acclaimed examples of this trend. In my own creative work, Treading Air, I fictionalise the life of Lizzie O’Dea, petty thief and sex worker. The women in these stories are vulnerable subjects unable to give their consent, and the often elliptical and unreliable historical records that are the textual traces of their lives, coupled with the discomfort of the voyeuristic gaze, make representations of criminal women in historical biofiction a fraught act.