Daly, Kathleen: Women's Pathways to Felony Court

Leanne Fiftal Alarid

Theories that account for why women commit crime have existed for well over a century. The earliest explanations suggested a biological origin between the sexes and assumed the inferiority of women. Later works insisted that the crimes women committed were hidden or underreported because of men's chivalrous behavior and the manipulative, deceitful nature of women. As educated women were increasingly drawn to the study of crime in the 1960s, these earlier ideas were challenged as scientifically flawed and stereotypical of sexist notions about women that lacked empirical basis. Over the next two decades, researchers such as Marie-Andree Bertrand, Frances Heidensohn, Pat Carlen, Dorie Klein, Carol Smart, and others dismantled many long-standing ideas in their attempt to depict women differently. Women's connections to the criminal justice system were viewed largely as victimization experiences of male violence and to the system's tendency to criminalize women's survival strategies to abuse and neglect. Part ...

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