Feminist criminology grew out of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s in response to the neglect of women by, and the male dominance of, mainstream criminology. Examining feminist theoretical perspectives and empirical research in criminology, this key book investigates their impact on the discipline, the academy, and the criminal justice system.

Women, Crime and Justice in Context presents contemporary feminist approaches to key issues in criminal justice. It draws together key researchers from Australia and New Zealand to offer a context-specific textbook that covers all of the major debates in the discipline in an accessible way. This book examines both the foundational texts and cutting-edge contributions to the topic and acknowledges the unique challenges and debates in the local Australian and New Zealand context. Written as an entry-level text, it introduces undergraduate students to key theories and debates on the topics of offending, victimization and the criminal justice system. It explores key topics in feminist criminology with chapters exploring sex work, prison abolitionism, community punishment, media representations of crime and victims, and the impacts of digital technology on gendered violence. Centring on an intersectional approach, the book includes chapters that focus on disability, queer criminology, indigenous perspectives, migration and service-user perspectives. The book concludes by exploring future directions in feminist approaches to crime and justice. This book will be essential reading for undergraduates studying feminist criminology, gender and crime, queer criminology, socio-legal studies, intersectionality, sociology and criminal justice.

This collection re-imagines the field of criminology with insights gleaned from feminist theory. Works included here illustrate that gender is a key organizing principle of social life. This means that men and women have gender, that patriarchy as well as gender must be theorized, and that other systems of oppression such as race and class must also be studied to fully understand the crime problem and the criminal justice system. Finally, the articles collected here exemplify the feminist concern for thinking consciously about how and why we do our research with the crucial goal of producing knowledge that will promote social justice.

Provocative collection of essays designed to give students an understanding of media representations of women's experience of violence and to educate a new generation to recognize and critique media images of women

A rich examination of the neglect and abuses occurring to women in correctional facilities, Women, Incarceration, and Human Rights Violations draws upon a wealth of case studies from around the world and class action lawsuits to shed light on ‘covert’ abuse such as sexual or physical abuse, as well as ‘overt’ abuse such as the denial of medical treatment. Adopting a feminist framework, this book offers a comparative evaluation of abuse in domestic and international correctional facilities, demonstrating the extent to which women are at high risk of being sexually abused and re-victimized in the correctional system, where pregnancy and other specific medical and health issues are consistently ignored. Calling attention to the necessity of addressing the gender-specific needs of women who are incarcerated, Women, Incarceration, and Human Rights Violations offers a review of current policy, laws, and regulation bearing on the issue, while providing concrete recommendations and policy changes to address abuses. As such it will appeal to sociologists, criminologists, and policymakers concerned with questions of gender, penology, and institutional abuse.

The first part of this book examines theoretical considerations, the second methodologies and the third feminist criminology in action. The book aims to show the potential of feminism to transform and transgress both theory and the politics of research and action in criminology.

This book takes a look at female offenders through a biosocial lens. The gender ratio problem (why always and everywhere males commit more criminal acts than females) has been called the single most important fact that criminology theories must be able to explain. Feminist criminology has attempted to do this for decades without success because it has relied on conceptual and theoretical tools from a single discipline -- sociology. A number of famous criminologists (e.g., Travis Hirschi) have concluded that an explanation of gender differences in crime from the sociological perspective may not be possible because it excludes biological sex, the powerful underlying base of gender. It is the contention of this book that unless feminist criminology comes to grips with the evolutionary and neurological bases of fundamental gender difference, the field will continue to flounder without compass. Other influential criminologists, such as Francis Cullen, have concluded that the biosocial paradigm is the paradigm of the 21st century. This book looks at feminist criminology in general and attempts to explain its main concerns from a biosocial perspective while showing that there is nothing illiberal about it and that biology can be a very powerful ally for criminology. The book ranges across disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, behavioral and molecular genetics, the neurosciences, and evolutionary biology to attempt to answer the gender ratio problem. Our efforts are guided by Niko Tinbergen's famous four questions about major behavior patterns: adaptive function, phylogenic history, development, and causation. It is time to apply this exciting and robust paradigm -- one that avers that any trait or behavior of any living thing is always the result of biological factors interacting with environmental factors -- to the most vexing issues of feminist criminology. Changes to the new edition include the integration of a larger body of empirical research and expansion of the topics (such as adding information on gender differences in brain regions) as well as an added chapter that focuses on the explanation of intimate partner violence and rape.