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Radical Feminism And Women's Experiences In The Criminal Justice System

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Feminist criminology is a branch of criminology that focuses on the intersectionionality of gender and crime. It emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an academic response to the lack of attention given to women's experiences in the criminal justice system. Feminist criminology aims to understand how gender inequality and patriarchy affect women's experiences as offenders, victims, and criminal justice professionals. There are several schools of feminist criminology, each with its own unique perspective on the topic.

Liberal feminism
The focus of Liberal feminism is the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights within the criminal justice system. Liberal feminists argue that both men and women as equals and that women should have the same opportunities within all spheres within the criminal justice system as victims as well as offenders. The liberal feminist school focuses on key concepts such as democracy, equal rights and opportunities and individual freedom. Liberation for women can be achieved by pushing for equal rights such as the right to work and receive equal pay, to vote and to receive education.

Radical feminism …show more content…

It argues that the criminal justice system is inherently patriarchal and focuses on the causes of patriarchal oppression such as sexist behaviour and the deliberate exclusion of female voices as well as the ways that gender race and sexuality create different experiences for women in the criminal justice system. Marxist and Liberal theories see women as individuals, whereas Radical feminism view women as a collective that are still oppressed by the patriarchy. Radical feminism expresses that the female experience within the criminal justice system cannot be addressed and understood without a deeper understanding of the socio-political context that they occur

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Through gender socialization women are told to stay quiet when it comes to rape and those women are blamed for what happened to them. The patriarchy that still is very prevalent in the college systems today have allowed for this behavior. Gender stratification has allowed for men to get away with their crimes and has forced women to remain silent. When women do speak up they are discriminated against and are called radical feminist. Many feminist movements have started to bring awareness to this issue and are trying to make the world we live in more just for the women who are struggling to have their voice be heard.

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Feminist criminology has been around since the late 1960's and started out centered on speculations brought upon traditional theories of crime. Most traditional theories didn't necessarily ignore women in the criminal justice system yet they generalized crime and what causes a person to turn to crime so that women who commit crimes are overlooked by the generalization. Not only are the numbers skewed when you look at gender in criminal justice offenders but there is also a certain bias in the criminal justice systems workers. In the movie Vera Drake there is a clear example of this when the investigator and the officer come into the movie. While watching you can easily assume that the female officer is treated and thought of much differently

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To begin the essay, it is best to look at the general concept of women policing according to an article called Policing Women/Top Cops/Triumph of Spirit, the history and current status of women in law enforcement is a topic of interest for women who wish to enter the profession (Rienerth, 2001). It through this article, that women were first used in the criminal justice system in the 1800s to deal with female prisoners as they were matrons in jails and prisons (Rienerth, 2001). Early female police officers often came from the ranks of social work and were located in separate department, had separate outfits, pay scales and duties from the male officers (Rienerth, 2001). Often times because of the female officers’ social work experience it was

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1.The theory/concept of intersectionality is a theory centered around oppression, domination and discrimination through various mediums from the social and cultural elements of society. The theory can be applied in many ways toward women as well as their involvement in the criminal justice system. Some forms of discrimination that is more prevalent in perceiving the individual is using a woman's status, race, sexual orientation, ability and age, however there can be more added to this list. The wiki article said “The theory proposes that we should think of each element or trait of a person as inextricably linked with all of the other elements in order to fully understand one's identity.”

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This approach, which has been adopted by the United States, places the criminal justice system at the forefront of addressing these issues. Proponents of carceral feminism argue that the criminal justice system should be used to punish perpetrators of sexual violence and also to deter others from engaging. However, this system has several notable drawbacks including the overarching idea that the criminal justice system is systematically flawed and fails to provide justice to victims in a lot of cases. This is especially true for victims that identify with marginalized groups, including women of color and low-income women. This is further explored through the in class reading of Emily Thuma’s piece titled, “Lessons in Self-Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anti Carceral Feminism.”

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According to Eastern Kentucky University on women and gender studies, “feminism is the issue of equality based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism”. Feminism

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According to Chesney-Lind and Daly (1988), feminist theory provides important insights into how gender is socially constructed and how it affects criminal conduct. Feminist criminology offers a framework for understanding the various experiences of women who commit violent crimes by looking at the connections of patriarchy, sexism, and power relations. Importantly, feminist ideas emphasize the need of taking into account women's independence as well as the social restrictions that influence their choices. Using a qualitative research methodology, this paper examines current literature, feminist theory, and case study analysis. An in-depth examination of the life experiences of female homicide offenders and the social situations in which their crimes occur can be made possible using the case study technique.

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The article highlights the arguments for and against the theory which maintains that female criminality is a gender pathway influenced by factors such as mental health issues, poverty, trauma and victimization of women. Over the last 30 years (1980-2009) the gender gap in arrests has narrowed and the changing pattern of arrests that lead to narrowed gender gap is not concurrent across the categories of criminal activities. Aggravated assault has accounted for a narrowed gender gap over the past 30 years due to a rise in female arrests which has more than doubled. The reason being said that it is not merely an increase in female offenders that have lead to this but an overall decrease in male arrests.

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Women of color are the most targeted, prosecuted, and imprisoned women in the country and rapidly increasing their population within the prison systems. According to Nicholas Freudenberg, 11 out of every 1000 women will end up incarcerated in their lifetime, the average age being 35, while only five of them are white, 15 are Latinas, and 36 are black. These two groups alone make up 70 percent of women in prison, an astonishing rate compared to the low percentage comprise of within the entire female population in the country (1895). Most of their offenses are non-violent, but drug related, and often these women come from oppressive and violent backgrounds, where many of their struggles occurred directly within the home and from their own family.

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The feminist theory obviously tries to find out the main principle of domestic abuse, and in doing so they see the root causes of domestic violence as the consequence of the outcome of us living in a society that aggressive behaviors are perpetrated by men, while the belief that women are socializing to be non-violent(Pence & Paymar, 1993). Proponents of the feminist theory do acknowledge that women can be violent in relationships with men; however they do not see that it can also be an issue of women abusing men in domestic violence cases, so it does not warrant the same amount of

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Moreover, it challenged the compulsory heterosexuality, a woman can only be successful in society if she is married to a man and be a good ‘housewife,’ which consolidates patriarchy. Radical Feminism challenged many social ideas from reproductive rights to workplace which inevitably led them to examine the traditional gender roles. Finally, Third Wave Feminism, or Transversal Feminism, ultimately seeks to overthrow essentialism, that there exists a single definition of man-ness and woman-ness. Instead, gender is a spectrum of

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Consequently, there is evidence from studies that draw conclusions that there is gender bias in sentencing for both women and men. On the surface there appears to be a degree of preferential treatment or leniency in the criminal justice system. However, there are other factors that enshroud the whole aspect of biases that include class, race and the offence in question among others. There is need for the justice system to understand female offenders in order to be able to address it effectively and avoid the perpetual claims of bias which only signifies the

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