Deck 16: Feminist Criminology

Question 1

Although Lombroso's, Pollak's and Thomas's is much discredited now, they are still worth consideration.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

What are the arguments for and against a feminist criminology?

Answer 2

Pat Carlen (1992: 53) described the idea of feminist criminology as neither 'desirable nor possible' and Gelsthorpe and Morris (1990: 2) suggested that criminology 'has for many feminist writers and researchers been a constraining rather than a constructive and creative influence'.Nevertheless, feminist criminology had an important impact on left realism and the perspectives are in many ways much more compatible than the 'debate' suggests.

Question 3

What is meant by patriarchy in terms of feminist criminology?

Answer 3

Patriarchy is a system of social stratification, which means that it uses a wide array of social control policies and practices to ratify male power and to keep girls and women subordinate to men' (Chesney-Lind, 2006: 9) A number of questions are raised by this. Most obviously, is whether theories derived from the study of, and designed to aid understanding of, male offending can be used or applied to female offending.

Question 4

Why does Heidensohn argue that appreciative criminology that replaced early criminological thought ignored or excluded women from their studies?

Question 5

It is argued that a number of questions cannot be answered using traditional criminological theory designed to aid understanding of male offending. These include:

A)they cannot explain extreme violence
B)ignoring racial and class inequalities
C)failing to address the pivotal issue of differential rates of male and female offending

Question 6

What is the basis for the 'emancipation thesis' in the 1970s?

A)as women were leaving traditional housebound roles they were becoming more involved in violence and other forms of offending
B)new opportunities for committing crime came with women's new roles
C)women were fundamentally changing
D)differences between the sexes were declining

Question 7

Otto Pollak (1961) argued that women are more devious than men because:

A)women's passive role in sex forms the basis for women's skill in deceit
B)relatively low official rates of female offending disguised the real situation
C)women are smaller and physically weaker
D)Crimes committed by women tend to reflect their nature and may often be hidden (poisoning, infanticide)

Question 8

According to Thomas (1923) the female criminal:

A)was deadlier than the male
B)was cold, calculating and amoral
C)required greater control and oversight
D)had failed to learn appropriate female roles

Question 9

In terms of feminist criminology Lombroso's work is now considered to be:

A)the primary bête-noir
B)archaic and desperately outdated
C)still having something useful to add
D)largely discredited and abandoned

Question 10

By and large, the idea that it is biological differences that are the primary cause of the distinctive patterns of male and female offending has disappeared from criminology, though an exception to this, as is the work of Dalton (1977) on the link between:

A)consumer culture and crime
B)violent women and crime
C)women and shoplifting
D)menstruation and crime

Question 11

In early criminology some attention was paid to women as for Lombroso, women
Were especially influenced by:

A)their boyfriends
B)their mothers
C)their biology
D)their peers

Question 12

Feminist scholarship is arguably the most important development in the past 30-40 years:

A)in critical criminological theory
B)in deviancy theory
C)in self control theory
D)in rational choice theory

Question 13

Feminist criminology was partly the product of the re-emergence of feminism from:

A)the 1990s
B)the Thatcher Government
C)the late 1960s onwards
D)the early 1900s

Question 14

For much of criminology's history women have been:

A)difficult to quantify
B)viewed in the same way as men
C)all but invisible
D)given special attention

Question 15

Women are criminalised less then men.

Question 16

Control theory has little to say about the understanding of women's offending.

Question 17

It is said that women are treated as 'doubly deviant' because they often use their children as an excuse for committing crime.

Question 18

It has been argued that the 'emancipation thesis' was more about women's new roles than a fundamental change in women themselves, and therefore not worth considering.

Question 19

According to Heidenshohn what are the often subtle ways in which women's lives are subjected to high levels of informal social control (Feeley and Little, 1991) ?