Criminological theory: its ideology and implications concerning women.

Classical and contemporary criminology has largely overlooked female criminality. This neglect has produced a situation in which analyses of this phenomenon have met no theoretically informed body of criticism and ideologically informed studies have become 'leading' works by default. The ideological underpinnings of these studies are based upon common-sense, uncritical understandings offemale behaviour and upon a belief that deviant behaviour is caused by individual pathology. The combination of these factors has had certain implications for our present knowledge and understanding of female criminality and for the 'treatment' of female offenders. In particular the transformation of Holloway Prison into a secure psychiatric hospital is symbolic of social attitudes towards female offenders who are presumed to be 'sick' and who need help to re-adjust to their appropriate, traditional role. This paper attempts to outline the prevailing ideologies inherent in the major works on female criminality and to point to their implications. By so doing it is hoped that more critical interest in this area will be generated so that female criminality will not remain of such marginal interest to the new schools of thought that are developing inside criminology as it has been to the traditional schools. Criminological tlleories have rarely been concerned with the analysis of female criminality. Typically criminologists have either been content to subsume discussion of women offenders under 'general' theories, that is to say they have implicitly assumed the female is dealt with in discussing the male, or they have dealt with them exceptionally briefly in the way that other 'marginal' or 'special' categories are treated. The reason offered for this overwhelming lack of interest is that within the population of known offenders, female offenders constitute a statistically much smaller proportion than male offenders. With the exception of offences like shoplifting and soliciting, the number of female offenders nowhere exceed the numbers of male offenders known to the police. But this statistical 'insigniScance' alone cannot fully explain why so little work has been attempted in this area. Rather the relative absence