Criminal law has traditionally been taught and analysed as if the gender of criminals and their victims is irrelevant. It has also been taught and analysed as if criminal law doctrine has no connection with questions of criminalisation,crime detection, decisions to charge and prosecute, lawyers trial tactics, decisions as to guilt and sentencing policy and practice, all of which are significantly affected by gender.This book seeks to fill these gaps by looking at the major areas in which gender affects the way that suspected criminals and their victims are treated by the criminal justice system. However, this book is not just a supplement to traditional criminal law discourse. It is a dangerous supplement, in that the focus on gender challenges laws claim to neutrality and even-handed justice.The essays in this book establish that, not only does the law frequently fail to offer women the sort of protection from male violence and sexual invasion that they need, but it continues to discriminate on grounds of gender. Even when discriminating in favour of women, it does so in ways that reinforce dangerous gender stereotypes. More specifically, both criminal law doctrine and criminal justice personnel apply and reinforce ideas, on the one hand, of female passivity, irrationality and proneness to illness, and, on the other, of natural male aggression - both physical and sexual.

Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, The Feminist War on Crime documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.

Contributors from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and South Africa analyze the impact of feminism on criminology in their countries, where feminist perspectives have challenged the basis of conventional criminology and altered the understanding of crimes such as domestic violence and child abuse. Some of the 11 chapters here are based on papers from the British Criminology Conference, Cardiff, July 1993. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law reflects the continued transformation of criminal law into a global discipline, providing scholars with a comprehensive international resource, a common point of entry into cutting edge contemporary research and a snapshot of the state and scope of the field. To this end, the Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter, disciplinarily, geographically, and systematically. Its contributors include current and future research leaders representing a variety of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise, and research agendas. The Handbook is divided into four parts: Approaches & Methods (I), Systems & Methods (II), Aspects & Issues (III), and Contexts & Comparisons (IV). Part I includes essays exploring various methodological approaches to criminal law (such as criminology, feminist studies, and history). Part II provides an overview of systems or models of criminal law, laying the foundation for further inquiry into specific conceptions of criminal law as well as for comparative analysis (such as Islamic, Marxist, and military law). Part III covers the three aspects of the penal process: the definition of norms and principles of liability (substantive criminal law), along with a less detailed treatment of the imposition of norms (criminal procedure) and the infliction of sanctions (prison law). Contributors consider the basic topics traditionally addressed in scholarship on the general and special parts of the substantive criminal law (such as jurisdiction, mens rea, justifications, and excuses). Part IV places criminal law in context, both domestically and transnationally, by exploring the contrasts between criminal law and other species of law and state power and by investigating criminal law's place in the projects of comparative law, transnational, and international law.

Women, Crime and Justice in Context presents contemporary feminist approaches to key issues in criminal justice. It draws together key researchers from Australia and New Zealand to offer a context-specific textbook that covers all of the major debates in the discipline in an accessible way. This book examines both the foundational texts and cutting-edge contributions to the topic and acknowledges the unique challenges and debates in the local Australian and New Zealand context. Written as an entry-level text, it introduces undergraduate students to key theories and debates on the topics of offending, victimization and the criminal justice system. It explores key topics in feminist criminology with chapters exploring sex work, prison abolitionism, community punishment, media representations of crime and victims, and the impacts of digital technology on gendered violence. Centring on an intersectional approach, the book includes chapters that focus on disability, queer criminology, indigenous perspectives, migration and service-user perspectives. The book concludes by exploring future directions in feminist approaches to crime and justice. This book will be essential reading for undergraduates studying feminist criminology, gender and crime, queer criminology, socio-legal studies, intersectionality, sociology and criminal justice.

Truth-seeking mechanisms, international criminal law developments, and other forms of transitional justice have become ubiquitous in societies emerging from long years of conflict, instability, and oppression, while moving toward the direction of a post-conflict, more peaceful era. In practice, both top-down and bottom-up approaches to transitional justice are being formally and informally developed in places such as South Africa, Liberia, Peru, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Northern Ireland. Many studies, publications, conferences, and debates have taken place addressing these developments and providing elaboration of theories relating to transition justice generally. However, rarely have these processes been examined and critiqued through a feminist lens. The position of women, particularly their specific victimization, typically has not been taken into account in any systematic manner. Seldom do commentators specifically consider whether the recently developed mechanisms for promoting peace and reconciliation will actually help the position of women in a society moving out of repression or conflict. Post-conflict societies, because they must rebuild, are ideally poised to introduce standards that would enable and ensure the active participation of the entire population, including women, in rebuilding a more stable, fair, and democratic polity. This book offers some insights into women's perspectives and feminist views on the topic of transitional justice or 'justice in transition.' Bringing feminism into the conversation allows for an expansion of the possibilities for a transformative justice approach after a period of conflict or insecurity, not by replacing it with feminist theory, but by broadening the scope and vision of the potential responses. (Series: Transitional Justice - Vol. 13)

Feminist criminology grew out of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s in response to the neglect of women by, and the male dominance of, mainstream criminology. Examining feminist theoretical perspectives and empirical research in criminology, this key book investigates their impact on the discipline, the academy, and the criminal justice system.

This work introduces and further develops the feminist strategy of 'norm transfer': the proposal that feminist informed standards created at the level of international criminal law make their way into domestic contexts. Situating this strategy within the complementarity regime of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it is argued that there is an opportunity for dialogue and debate around the contested aspects of international norms as opposed to uncritical acceptance. The book uses the crime of rape as a case study and offers a new perspective on one of the most contentious debates within international and domestic criminal legal feminism: the relationship between consent and coercion in the definition of rape. In analysing the ICC definition of rape, it is argued that the omission of consent as an explicit element is flawed. Arguing that the definition is in need of revision to explicitly include a context-sensitive notion of consent, the book goes further, setting out draft legislative amendments to the ICC 'Elements of Crimes' definition of rape and its Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Turning its attention to the domestic landscape, the book drafts amendments to the United Kingdom (UK) Sexual Offences Act 2003 and to the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999: thereby showing how the revised version of the ICC definition can be applied in context of the UK.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Feminist Theory, Crime, and Social Justice offers an insightful look at the primarily masculine-driven perspective on crime and justice through the lens of feminist theory. The book presents the argument that an increased understanding of the female crime typology, life course, and gender-specific programming will improve social justice for offenders. Discussions on the direct implications of the way society views crime and justice contribute to policy recommendations for helping to improve these views, specifically as they relate to female crime.