Introducing women and crime

Abstract

One of the most remarkable developments in publishing in recent years has been the growth in the number of books for, about and by women. In particular, handbooks and guides of every sort have appeared, encouraging women to realise themselves emotionally and educationally and imparting skills in everything from building to banking. There is too a growing range of women’s studies — books designed to explain and analyse aspects of women’s experience both for the concerned general reader and for the increasing numbers of students of women’s studies or sex and gender courses which are now offered. This book will, I hope, share some of the characteristics of both these types. While it is not intended to be a how-to-do-it handbook for female criminals, I have included as comprehensive a selection as I could of what we know about women and crime, women and criminal justice, and women’s experience of imprisonment. At the same time, I have tried to extend and develop an understanding of the deviance and conformity of women which will, I trust, prove useful both to students of women’s studies and to the professional looking for a guide to the maze of assertions and counter-assertions about, for instance, the ‘new’ female criminal.