The Gender of Crime

193 Pages·2011·3.184 MB·English

by  Dana M. Britton

The Gender of Crime
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THE GENDER LENS SERIES
Series Editors
Judith A. Howard, University of Washington
Barbara Risman, University of Illinois, Chicago
Joey Sprague, University of Kansas
The Gender Lens series has been conceptualized as a way of encouraging the devel-
opment of a sociological understanding of gender. A “gender lens” means work-
ing to make gender visible in social phenomena; asking if, how, and why social
processes, standards, and opportunities differ systematically for women and men.
It also means recognizing that gender inequality is inextricably braided with other
systems of inequality. The Gender Lens series is committed to social change directed
toward eradicating these inequalities. Originally published by Sage Publications
and Pine Forge Press, all Gender Lens books are now available from The Rowman
& Littlefield Publishing Group.
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Judith A. Howard and Jocelyn A. Hollander, Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves: A
Gender Lens on Social Psychology
Michael A. Messner, Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements
Judith Lorber, Gender and the Social Construction of Illness
Scott Coltrane, Gender and Families
Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess, editors, Revisioning Gender
Pepper Schwartz and Virginia Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality: Exploring Sexual Pos-
sibilities
Francesca M. Cancian and Stacey J. Oliker, Caring and Gender
M. Bahati Kuumba, Gender and Social Movements
Toni M. Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slevin, Gender, Social Inequities, and Aging
Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore, Gender and the Social Construction of Illness, Sec-
ond Edition
Shirley A. Hill, Black Intimacies: A Gender Perspective on Families and Relationships
Lisa D. Brush, Gender and Governance
Dorothy E. Smith, Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People
Joey Sprague, Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers: Bridging Differences
Joan Acker, Class Questions: Feminist Answers
Oriel Sullivan, Changing Gender Relations, Changing Families: Tracing the Pace of
Change over Time
Sara L. Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan, Gendering Bodies
Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love
Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams, Gender and Families, Second Edition
Manisha Desai, Gender and the Politics of Possibilities
Jocelyn A. Hollander, Daniel G. Renfrow, and Judith Howard, Gendered Situations,
Gendered Selves: A Gender Lens on Social Psychology, Second Edition
Dana M. Britton, The Gender of Crime
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The Gender of Crime
Dana M. Britton
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham (cid:129) Boulder (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2011 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Britton, Dana M.
The gender of crime / Dana M. Britton.
p. cm. — (The gender lens series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-0969-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0970-1 (pbk. :
alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0971-8 (electronic)
1. Female offenders. 2. Criminals. 3. Sex role—Social aspects. I. Title.
HV6046.B825 2011
364.3—dc22
2010047437
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 A Gender Lens on Criminology 1
2 Gender and Criminal Offending 23
3 Gender and the Criminal Justice System 53
4 Gender and Crime Victimization 81
5 Gender and Work in the Criminal Justice System 109
6 Conclusion 141
Notes 149
References 159
Index 179
v
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Acknowledgments
This project has been many years in development—my first conversations
about it took place in the fall of 2002 with Mitch Allen, then an editor at
AltaMira, and Judy Howard, Barbara Risman, and Joey Sprague, editors of
the Gender Lens series. I was at that time a newly tenured associate profes-
sor who had, more or less by accident, found myself teaching criminology
courses. I am by training and inclination a sociologist of gender, with a
specific research interest in gender and work. My dissertation research,
and then my first book (At Work in the Iron Cage: The Prison as Gendered
Organization, NYU Press, 2003), had focused on a not particularly typical
work environment, however—the prison. I chose prisons not because of
any particular interest in criminology or corrections, but because men’s
and women’s prisons offered a unique occupational case—a set of at least
nominally parallel occupations in which one (work in men’s prisons) had
historically been dominated by men, and the other (work in women’s pris-
ons) had historically been dominated by women.
My research on work in prisons led me to a position teaching criminol-
ogy (among other courses) and ultimately to think and write more broadly
about gender and social control. As I spent more time at this disciplinary in-
tersection, I found myself alternately frustrated with mainstream criminol-
ogy, which—though presumably studying one of the most gender-differen-
tiated of all social phenomena—often seemed to be oblivious to gender;
and with the sociology of gender, which—though purportedly interested
in the intersections of race, gender, and class—often ignored the lives of
women and men who became casualties in America’s escalating war on
crime. Hence when the opportunity to turn a “gender lens” on criminology
came along, I was eager for the chance to write a book that would inform
vii
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viii Acknowledgments
both disciplines, a book that would teach those interested in criminology
something about the importance of gender, and one that would encourage
those interested in gender to bring their skills to understanding crime, vic-
timization, and social control.
This project has proceeded by fits and starts over the past ten years,
delayed by other projects, administrative responsibilities, and life. In that
time I have accumulated a number of intellectual debts. First and foremost,
I am grateful to the feminist criminologists whose own work has made this
book possible. Many of them are cited in the following chapters. Given the
page limitations I faced, I have not even attempted anything approaching
a comprehensive review of their work; I apologize in advance for errors
of omission. Instead I have chosen to highlight particular studies that I
see as demonstrating the importance and value of viewing crime, punish-
ment, victimization, or work in the system through a lens shaped by the
intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. It is my hope that readers
will use these examples as starting points for their own further reading and
research. There is now a vibrant body of research that falls under the rubric
of feminist criminology.
I am also grateful to my editor on this project, Judy Howard. Judy has
been patient (obviously!) and always encouraging; her fine editorial sense
has helped shape this project from its outset. Thanks also to Christine Wil-
liams, who invited me to write the review article that started the conversa-
tion about this book in the first place. At the other end of the process, I
am grateful to my editor at Rowman & Littlefield, Sarah Stanton, and her
editorial assistant, Jin Yu, who helped shepherd the book through the final
stages. Over the years, a number of my graduate students have provided
comments on drafts or gathered literature and references. For this and for
many conversations about the topics discussed in this book, I thank An-
drea Button, Jessica Dickson, Sarah Donley, Sarah Jones, Laura Logan, and
Cindy Whitney. Among my extended colleagues, Jody Miller and Jill Mc-
Corkel read early chapter drafts, and Susan L. Miller read a near-final draft
of the entire book and pointed me to many useful resources. Any errors that
remain are, of course, m y own.
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1
A Gender Lens on Criminology
Consider the following timeline:
February 2, 1996, Moses Lake, Washington: Two students and one
teacher killed when fourteen-year-old Barry Loukaitis opens fire in his
algebra class.
February 19, 1997, Bethel, Alaska: One student and one principal killed
by Evan Ramsey, sixteen.
October 1, 1997, Pearl, Mississippi: Two students killed by Luke Wood-
ham, sixteen.
December 1, 1997, West Paducah, Kentucky: Three students killed by
Michael Carneal, fourteen.
March 24, 1998, Jonesboro, Arkansas: Four students and one teacher
killed by Mitchell Johnson, thirteen, and Andrew Golden, eleven.
May 21, 1998, Springfield, Oregon: Two students killed by Kip Kinkel,
fifteen, who also killed his parents.
April 20, 1999, Littleton, Colorado: Twelve students and one teacher
killed by Eric Harris, eighteen, and Dylan Klebold, seventeen. The
shooters also killed themselves.
March 5, 2001, Santee, California: Two students killed by Charles An-
drew Williams, fifteen.
September 24, 2003, Cold Spring, Minnesota: Two students shot and
killed by John Jason McLaughlin, fifteen.
March 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minnesota: One teacher, one security guard,
and five students killed by Jeff Weise, sixteen, who also murdered his
grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend. The shooter killed himself.
1
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