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Feminist Criminology

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Editorial
Susan F. Sharp Feminist Criminology 2006 1: 3 DOI: 10.1177/1557085105282898 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fcx.sagepub.com/content/1/1/3

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Division on Women and Crime of The American Society of Criminology

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Feminist 10.1177/1557085105282898 Sharp / Editorial Criminology

Editorial

Feminist Criminology Volume 1 Number 1 January 2006 3-5 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/1557085105282898 http://fc.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

he launching of a new journal raises the question of why this particular journal might be needed. This is certainly the case for Feminist Criminology, the official journal of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology. With a plethora of criminology journals, why indeed do we need one more? And equally important, just exactly what is feminist criminology? To answer these questions, a review of the history of feminist scholarship in criminology as well as of the Division on Women and Crime is needed. The second question, what is feminist criminology, should perhaps be addressed first to more fully explain why this journal is needed. Realistically, it would be more appropriate to refer to feminist criminologies, as there is no single theoretical perspective and no one methodology that dominate the field. Instead, feminist criminology is the label applied to criminological research and theory that places women at the center of the analyses. Prior to the late 1960s, most criminological theory was based on research focusing on the behaviors and experiences of males. Thus, the study of crime became equated with the study of male criminality. One has only to look at Hirschis (1969) influential Causes of Delinquency to confirm this. The logic used implies that the study of male crime is sufficient to explain all crime. However, feminist criminologists began to challenge this androcentric dominance of criminology, arguing that to have a full understanding of the causes and consequences of crime, one must incorporate not only the male perspective but that of females as well. Otherwise, the picture is incomplete. Unfortunately, the majority of criminological research in the top-tier journals still either ignores women or treats gender as a control variable (Sharp & Hefley, 2004). My first inkling of this problem occurred in graduate school when I was introduced to Sampson and Laubs (1993) life-course explanation of control theory. As I read about the ways in which salient work and valued marital relationships could act as control mechanisms, I asked the question, But is the same really true for women? Or would children be more salient and, thus, more likely to cause women to desist from criminal activity? Because the criminologists in my program were mainstream in their approach, I had not yet been introduced to feminist criminology. However, the idea of this journal was born at that time. Theoretical explanation of female criminality is just one area that feminist criminologists have examined. Conviction, sentencing, and the effects of sentencing are gendered as well and as thus, are fodder for feminist criminology. Like theoretical explanations of criminality, the study of responses to male crime cannot simply be extended to females. Not only do different factors contribute to engaging in crime but

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4 Feminist Criminology

also there are different consequences. One has only to examine the literature on the effects of incarceration on families for this to become clear. Although the imprisonment of a father has severe economic and emotional consequences for a family, the mother usually is available to care for the children. However, when the mother is incarcerated, she is frequently the only parent in the household. This means that the children must then be placed in other homes, often with the parents or siblings of the prisoner (Greenfeld & Snell, 1999; Mumola, 2000). Womens prisons are often sadly lacking in programs in comparison to mens prisons, and this, too, has become a focus of feminist criminology. There are other topics that can best be addressed by feminist criminology, including intimate partner violence, gang membership, and the gendered nature of criminal justice employment. Women, far more often than men, are the victims of intimate violence. This has given rise to one of the more influential specialty journals in criminology, Violence Against Women. Gang membership, a topic of substantial criminological research, is often significantly different for females, both in its genesis and in its structure. Finally, women working as police officers, correctional officers, attorneys, and judges often face very different issues than their male counterparts. These are just a few of the topics addressed by feminist criminologists. During the past three decades, feminist criminology has continued to develop and expand (Goodstein, 1992). Beginning with the publication of a special issue of Issues in Criminology (Klein & Kress, 1973), the study of women and crime began to grow. By the early 1980s, the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology was founded (Rafter, 2000). By the late 1990s, there was a significant amount of feminist criminological scholarship in print. However, much of this body of work has been relegated to specialty journals (e.g., Women & Criminal Justice, Violence Against Women), special issues of other journals, or book-length treatments. Overall, mainstream criminological journals still appear to place minimal importance on feminist approaches to the study of crime and the criminal justice system (Sharp & Hefley, 2004). Thus, the decision to launch a new criminology journal focusing on feminist scholarship was reached at the annual business meeting of the Division on Women and Crime. The main aim of this journal will be to focus on research related to women, girls, and crime. Defined broadly, this includes research on women working in the criminal justice profession, women as offenders, women in the criminal justice system, women as victims, and theories and tests of theories related to women and crime. This journal will highlight scholarship that demonstrates the gendered nature of crime and the justice system. The main focus will be empirical research and theory, although we also welcome practice-oriented papers. So, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the first issue of Feminist Criminology. In this issue, you will find an article on the current state of feminist criminology by Meda Chesney-Lind, Amanda Burgess-Proctors suggestion for a future direction feminist criminology should take, and empirical research by Joanne Belknap and Kristi Holsinger as well as by Darrell Steffensmeier, Hua Zhong, Jeff Ackerman, Jennifer Schwartz, and Suzanne Agha. I

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Sharp / Editorial 5

hope you, the reader, find these articles enlightening and educational, and I hope you will consider Feminist Criminology as an outlet for your own work.
Susan F. Sharp Editor

References
Goodstein, L. (1992). Feminist perspectives and the criminal justice curriculum. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 3, 165-181. Greenfeld, L. A., & Snell, T. L. (1999). Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin: Women offenders. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Klein, D., & Kress, J. (Eds.). (1973). Women, crime and criminology [Special issue]. Issues in Criminology, 8(3). Mumola, C. (2000). Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin: Incarcerated mothers and their children. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Rafter, N. H. (Ed.). (2000). Encyclopedia of women and crime. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sharp, S. F., & Hefley, K. (2004, November 17). This is a mans world . . . or at least thats how it looks in the journals. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Nashville, TN.

Susan F. Sharp is an associate professor and graduate liaison in the Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma. She is the outgoing chair of the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology. In the past, she has served as executive counselor and newsletter editor for the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology. She is editor of the text The Incarcerated Woman (Prentice Hall, 2003); sole author of Hidden Victims (Rutgers University Press, 2005), a book on the effects of the death penalty on families of offenders; and author of more than 20 articles and book chapters focusing on gender, crime, and the criminal justice system.

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