Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal.

Abstract

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Female Violent Offenders: Moral Panics or More Serious Offenders?

“…The answers to these questions have varied over time but perhaps what remains most intriguing is the resilience of this line of inquiry. While increases in female offending were linked to changing gender roles early in the 20th century (Bishop, 1931), it was Freda Adler's (1975) sensationalisation of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs), in concert with second-wave feminism, that contributed to a surge in scholarly and media discourse on women offenders in the 1970s. Adler argued that just as women were taking advantage of newfound opportunities in the labour market, so also were they expanding their roles in illegal activities.…”

Status, socialization, and identities: Central factors to understand disparities in crime

“…Of the leading orthodox theorists, Agnew is the only one to attempt to address this call with gendered (Broidy & Agnew, 1997) and racialized (Kaufman et al, 2008) articulations of general strain theory 2. Group‐specific theories of crime and paradigms have emerged over the years, such as the theory of African American offending (Unnever & Gabbidon, 2011), Black criminology (Russell, 1992; Unnever, Gabbidon, & Chouhy, 2018), feminist perspectives (e.g., Adler, 1975; Belknap, 1996; Chesney‐Lind, 1989; Heimer & De Coster, 1999; Miller, 2001; Simpson, 1989), Black feminist criminology (Potter, 2006, 2015; Richie, 2012), and Queer criminology (Buist & Lenning, 2016; Mogul, Ritchie, & Whitlock, 2011). Although these are worthwhile, empirically supported endeavors that move the field forward, they still fall short of capturing the complexities of within‐group variations.…”

The Governance of Female Drug Users

“…The female lawbreaker as 'emancipated' thesis is a recent addition to the drug use literature. However, as Maher (1997) has pointed out, this idea is not a new one, and is renowned among criminologists as the 'emancipation' or 'opportunity' thesis (see, for example, Adler, 1975;Simon, 1975). In the mid-1970s, Adler (1975 attributed the increase in the number of women arrested to the feminist movement.…”

“…Dramatic increases in female arrest and incarceration rates in the US, Canada and the UK since the 1970s have prompted various debates about women, crime and punishment. In the 1970s a moral panic ensued about women's crime, suggesting that the apparent increases were caused by women's emancipation, and that a new, more violent, breed of female criminal was emerging (see, for example, Adler, 1975;Simon, 1975). Adler (1975) and Simon (1975) linked increases in the numbers of women arrested to women's desire for social and economic equality.…”

“…In the 1970s a moral panic ensued about women's crime, suggesting that the apparent increases were caused by women's emancipation, and that a new, more violent, breed of female criminal was emerging (see, for example, Adler, 1975;Simon, 1975). Adler (1975) and Simon (1975) linked increases in the numbers of women arrested to women's desire for social and economic equality. Although this thesis received wide public acceptance, a closer analysis of arrest data found little to support this notion (see, for example, Steffensmeier, 1980).…”