Are men and women who are prosecuted for similar crimes punished differently? If women are sentenced more leniently, does it vary with race and class? This work explores these issues and others by focusing on a variety of processed court cases such as homicide, robbery and drug offences.

This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories. Women constituted a small percentage of those tried in courtrooms and sentenced to prison terms during the nineteenth century, yet their experiences offer valuable insight into the era’s criminal justice system. Hayden illuminates how criminal punishment and reform intersected with larger social issues of the time, including questions of race, class, and gender, and reveals how women prisoners actively influenced their situation despite class disparities. Hayden’s focus on recovering the individual experiences of women in the criminal justice system across the state of Pennsylvania marks a significant shift from studies that focus on the structure and leadership of penal institutions and reform organizations in urban centers. Troublesome Women advances our understanding of female crime and punishment in the antebellum period and challenges preconceived notions of nineteenth-century womanhood. Scholars of women’s history and the history of crime and punishment, as well as those interested in Pennsylvania history, will benefit greatly from Hayden’s thorough and fascinating research.

Crime and punishment, criminal law and its administration, are areas of ancient history that have been explored less than many other aspects of ancient civilizations. Throughout history women have been affected by crime both as victims and as offenders. Yet, in the ancient world customary laws were created by men, formal laws were written by men, and both were interpreted and enforced by men.

The Gender of Crime introduces readers to how gender shapes our understanding of every aspect of crime—from defining what crime is to governing how crime is punished. The second edition of this award-winning book maintains the accessible, reader-friendly narrative of the first edition with key updates and new material throughout, including increased focus on the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in crime and punishment; more attention to LGBTQ issues; additional coverage of gender and crime on college campuses; and more. This dynamic and provocative book illustrates how gender is central to the definition, prosecution, and sentencing of crimes, that it shapes how victimization is experienced and understood, and how it structures the institutions of the criminal justice system and the experiences of workers within that system. The Gender of Crime demonstrates that crime, victimization, and crime control are never generic—they are instead produced and experienced by gendered (and raced, and classed, and sexualized) actors within contexts of social inequality. This book highlights key concepts and encourages readers to think through a range of compelling real-life examples, from school violence to corporate crime. The second edition of The Gender of Crime is essential reading for students of gender and sexuality, sociology, criminology, and criminal justice.

In Gendered Crime and Punishment, Stacey Schlau mines the Inquisitional archive of Spain and Latin America in order to uncover the words and actions of accused women as transcribed in the trial records of the Holy Office. Although these are mediated texts, filtered through the formulae and norms of the religious institution that recorded them, much can be learned about the prisoners’ individual aspirations and experiences, as well as about the rigidly hierarchical, yet highly multicultural societies in which they lived. Chapters on Judaizing, false visions, possession by the Devil, witchcraft, and sexuality utilize case studies to unpack hegemonic ideologies and technologies, as well as individual responses. Filling in a gap in our understanding of the dynamics of gender in the early modern/colonial period, as it relates to women and gender, the book contributes to the growing scholarship in Inquisition cultural studies.

Focusing on women's relationships, life-circumstances and agency, Elaine Farrell reveals the voices, emotions and decisions of incarcerated women and those affected by their imprisonment, offering an intimate insight into their experiences of the criminal justice system across urban and rural post-Famine Ireland.

Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, The Feminist War on Crime documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.