Feminist Criminology

I found this in my Google Slides. It must be from my Criminal Justice Admin degree. I always found feminist criminology interesting. 

Most of the social theories have kind of the same starting point - crime is caused by a power imbalance. Marxist theory says that capitalism and financial inequality cause crime. I assume there's an explanation for white collar crime but I can't remember, it may just seek to explain criminality in the underclasses. 

Feminist criminology began in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a response to the limited ways in which women were dealt with in the criminal justice system. 

Traditionally women were controlled by their family and community. They often were not given the opportunity to commit crimes, and the deviance they exhibited was more commonly moving away from sex based roles of of soft feminine wife or mother figure. When women did deviate from these norms tended to be hidden by the family and the woman would be considered mentally ill. If the act of the woman was a particularly unpleasant crime then they would often be considered more culpable due to the fact that they were moving away from societal standards as well as the norms of womanhood. The reverse of this also happened women would be considered to be less culpable because they had clearly been led astray by a man or they were so mentally broken that it wasn’t all their fault as they were not strong enough to control their actions. Feminist criminology looks at the lack of understanding as to why women commit crimes and also allows women to be free agents who do not need to be protected from men and life. It allows women to be capable of committing crimes for a range of unique reasons. It attempts to remove the idea that deviance for women is simply to deviate from womanhood.
A recent case that can be used to highlight the way in which women and even their ability to be victims is not considered properly in traditional criminology theories is that of the rape and murder of Jill Meagher, she was the victim of a known violent sex offender. In this case it is not so much her death that highlights a feminist criminological theory. In this case the offence, a violent stranger with a history of violence against women and she the traditional victim. She was a wife, had a good job, lived a good life. She fitted the mould of femininity and he was the deranged psychopathic offender. She did not bear any responsibility for what happened to her because she fit the profile. Society does not place any of the blame one her for her victimisation.

That's a very rough description of feminist criminology based on a PowerPoint presentation I made in 2016 for uni. 

Keep doing the feminsims! Probably not as crime though, I mean, unless you really want to. 

Edit
Myra Hindley is a much better example of a how feminist criminology works. Either she was doubly deviant. She killed a murderer and she broke the woman code and not only killed but killed innocent children or she was the unwitting victim of Ian Brady. She was nothing but a poor woman who was forced by him to commit horrible acts that she had no autonomy in because a woman could never do those things. 

Perhaps the Marxist theory doesn’t actually believe in white collar crime, much like Freud didn’t believe in the Electra complex, maybe it’s just another mechanism of oppression. Make it look like those in power are being punished for doing things that are so corrupt that they cannot be ignored so that those underneath won’t protest? I don’t know. I remember not being that keen on Marxist theory. And yes these were actual shower thoughts. Enjoy!