Offending Women in Contemporary China: Gender and Pathways into Crime

142 Pages·2015·0.734 MB·English

by  Anqi Shen (auth.)

Offending Women in Contemporary China
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0001
Palgrave Advances in Criminology and Criminal Justice in Asia
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Titles include:
Anqi Shen
OFFENDING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
Gender and Pathways into Crime
Palgrave Advances in Criminology and Criminal Justice in Asia
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0001
Offending Women
in Contemporary
China: Gender and
Pathways into Crime
Anqi Shen
Senior Lecturer in Law and Policing, Teesside
University, United Kingdom
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0001
© Anqi Shen 2015
Soffftcoverr eprint off thehardcover 1stedition2015 978–1–137–44143–0
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN: 978–1–137–44144–7 PDF
ISBN: 978–1–349–49479–8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137441447
Contents
List of Tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
1 Offending Women in Contemporary China:
An Introduction 1
2 Researching Chinese Female Offenders:
The Methodology 13
3 Female Members of Black-Society
Style Criminal Organisations 32
4 Female Offenders Who Organised Others for
Prostitution 53
5 Female Child Traffickers 74
6 Conclusion 95
Bibliography 104
Index 128
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0001 v
List of Tables
2.1 Offences involving female prisoners in the
sample prison, July 2013 23
2.2 Respondents who participated in the
interviews (n = 26), September 2013 25
3.1 Profile of the participants convicted of
Section 294 offence (n = 7), July 2013 39
4.1 Business format and individuals’ positions in
sex-work management 58
4.2 Profile of the respondents convicted of
organising others for prostitution (n = 9),
July 2013 59
5.1 Profile of the respondents convicted of
child trafficking (n = 10), July 2013 81
5.2 Educational status of the participants
convicted of child trafficking (n = 29), July 2013 81
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0002
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of those who offered me advice,
encouragement, and support during my research and the
writing of this book.
First of all, I must offer my sincere gratitude to the 26
female prisoners who participated in the interviews. Their
stories, although sad, inspired me to write this book. I
hope by making the truth about them known, positive
changes can be made to improve the conditions of the
marginalised social groups they belong to.
I am indebted to my anonymous contacts and friends
working in the Chinese criminal justice system for assist-
ing me to gain access to the respondents, and to the duty
officers for assisting me during the interviews. Without
them, this research would not have been possible. I am
grateful to Yongzhong, Ce and his wife Daxia, for letting
me use their accounts to access the Chinese academic
databases from which I obtained the published materials
in Chinese for this study.
At work, I would like to thank my colleagues and
friends at the Centre for Realist Criminology at Teesside
University, for creating a vivid intellectual environment.
Special thanks go to Georgios Antonopoulos for his
comradeship, encouragement, enthusiasm, and dedication
to academic research that has influenced me since 2007;
Steve Hall who first encouraged me to write a single-
authored academic monograph and offered advice on the
proposal of this book; and Simon Winlow who worked with
me on a journal article discussing female criminality in
China in 2013, from which I realised feminist criminology
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0003 vii
viii Acknowledgements
to be uniquely critical, stylish, and fascinating. I am indebted to Philip
Whitehead for reading the early drafts of Chapters 1–5. Our meetings
following the completion of each draft chapter were so helpful, kept me
committed to the timeframe, and convinced me that my writing was in
the right direction. There are so many others to whom I am very grateful,
but I am unable to list all their names here.
I would also like to thank Paul Crawshaw and Rob McDonald for
their continued support within the outlet of the Social Future Institute
at Teesside University, the University for supporting my fieldwork
conducted in China in 2013 under its International Visiting Academic
Scheme, my school for providing generous research support, and my
colleagues in the law subject group for creating a friendly working envi-
ronment and influencing me intellectually over the years.
I am grateful to my editors Harriet Barker, Julia Willan, and Dominic
Walker at Palgrave Macmillan for first inviting me to write about my
research in China at Wolverhampton in July 2013, and for all their support
afterwards. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their invaluable
comments and advice, and Suzanne Evans for her friendship – I relied
on her magical skills for the final editorial check.
I would like to thank all the conference audience for their useful
discussions and comments on the early versions of Chapters 2 and 3,
which I presented as papers, respectively, at the National Deviancy
Conference in June 2014 at Teesside and at the Annual Conference of the
British Society of Criminology the following month in Liverpool.
Most of all, I am deeply indebted to my parents, for their care, love, and
endless support. This book is dedicated to them. I owe special thanks to
Dave for tolerating the long hours I spent in the evenings and weekends
reading and writing, for cooking, and for everything during the time it
has taken this book to come to fruition.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0003
1
Offending Women in
Contemporary China:
An Introduction
Abstract: The primary aim of this book is to examine the
criminogenic factors of female criminality and the social
contexts that facilitate women’s participation in criminal
offending in post-Mao China. A further aim is to explore
how these factors are gendered. In an attempt to better
understand women’s offending, this chapter firstly looks
into the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Chinese
women on the whole, and secondly, it investigates the
impact of the radical socioeconomic changes following the
1978 reforms on Chinese women in general and on female
offenders in particular.
Shen, Anqi. Offending Women in Contemporary China:
Gender and Pathways into Crime. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137441447.0004.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137441447.0004 