Routledge Handbook of Women''s Experiences of Criminal Justice

This Handbook brings together the voices of a range of contributors interested in the many varied experiences of women in criminal justice systems, and who are seeking to challenge the status quo.

Although there is increasing literature and research on gender, and certain aspects of the criminal justice system (often Western focused), there is a significant gap in the form of a Handbook that brings together these important gendered conversations. This essential book explores research and theory on how women are perceived, handled, and experience criminal justice within and across different jurisdictions, with particular consideration of gendered and disparate treatment of women as law-breakers. There is also consideration of women's experiences through an intersectional lens, including race and class, as well as feminist scholarship and activism. The Handbook contains 47 unique chapters with nine overarching themes (Lessons from history and theory; Routes into the criminal justice system; Intersectionality; Sentencing and the courts and community punishments; Specific offences; Incarcerated women's experiences; Mothers and families; Rehabilitation and reintegration; Practitioner relationships), and each theme includes contributions from different countries as well as the experiences of contributors from different stages in their own journey.

International and interdisciplinary in scope, this Handbook is essential reading for scholars and students of criminology, sociology, social policy, social work, and law. It will also be of interest to practitioners, such as social workers, probation officers, prison officers, and policy makers.

List of contents

1. Womanhood as Weakness, or Why Witches Were Witches
Trace M Maddox


2. Infanticide Cases, Expert Evidence, and the Sympathetic Jury, in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century England
Rachel Dixon


3. 'Completely innocent or wholly culpable': Judicial outcomes of women tried for homicide in pre-modern England
Stephanie Brown


4. Shifting trends and discourses in women's imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand
Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour and Kirsten Gibson


5. Criminalised Women and the Risk Lens
Hazel Kemshall


6. Women's desistance: A review of the literature through a gendered lens
Madeline Pertrillo


7. Perpetrators and Victims: Women, double deviance, and the criminal justice system
Vicky Seaman and Orla Lynch


8. "She Should Have Known": Oversimplified narratives of the victim-offender cycle within women human trafficking 'offenders'
Alexandra L. A. Baxter


9. Care-Experienced Women in the Criminal Justice System
Claire Fitzpatrick, Jo Staines and Katie Hunter


10. Family violence, homelessness and criminalised women: accounting for systemic violence in the Australian post-release milieu
Rebecca Bunn and Elisa Buggy


11. Domestic abuse as a driver to women's offending
Jo Roberts


12. Muslim Women Moving on from Crime
Sofia Buncy, Alexandria Bradley and Sarah Goodwin


13. Making visible the invisibalised voices of criminalised women in Australia
Debbie Kilroy and Tabitha Lean


14. Women, Religion and Criminal Justice in Ireland
Lynsey Black


15. Women's Experiences of Criminal Justice System in Pursuit of Inheritance: Voices from Pakistan
Iram Rubab


16. Lived Realities of Spouses of Incarcerated Husbands in India
Rashmi Choudhury


17. Lesbian Experiences of the Criminal Justice System: A Practitioner Perspective
Kath Wilson


18. At the intersection of disadvantage, disillusionment and resilience: Black women's experiences in prison
Angela Charles


19. Remanding Women: Exploring the scope for using therapeutic jurisprudence as a framework in the bail and remand decision-making process
Lisa Mary Armstrong


20. Being a girl: does it matter in the Belgian Youth Court?
Sofie De Bus


21. Young Women in Norwegian Courts: A Study of Contemporary Control Strategies
Jane Dullum, Elisabeth Fransson and Sven-Erik Skotte


22. Assessing the viability of problem-solving courts for criminalised women
Carly Lightowlers and Nicole Benefer


23. The Gendered Harms of Criminalisation: Buying abortion pills on the internet in Northern Ireland
Goretti Horgan and Linda Moore


24. The meaning of gender in sentencing domestic violence homicide cases in Poland
Anna Matczak and Emilia Rekosz-Cebula


25. Being female sex offenders inside the criminal justice system: The Colombian case
Angie Borda-Montenegro


26. Situating police legitimacy: The accounts of substance-using and sex-working women in Nigeria
Ediomo-Ubong E. Nelson and Aniekan S. Brown


27. Out of sight, out of mind: The incarceration of cognitively disabled women in Australian prisons
Julie-Anne Toohey


28. Incarcerated Women's Experiences in Spain
Carmen Navarro, Anna Meléndez and Jenny Cubells


29. Peer mentoring for women in prison: experiences of power, control and reliving past trauma
Melissa Henderson and Rosie Meek


30. Carceral collectivism and incarcerated women's experiences in Lithuania and Latvia
R¿ta Vai¿i¿nien¿, Arta Jalili Idrissi and Art¿ras Tereškinas


31. Maternal Imprisonment: The enduring impact of imprisonment on mothers and their children
Lucy Baldwin and Sophie Mitchell


32. Imprisoned Women and Reproductive Health: A Site of Reproductive Rights Violation?
Emma Milne and Vicki Dabrowski


33. Mother-infant separations in prison: Why does context matter?
Klare Martin and Claire Powell


34. Mothering within a Prison Nursery - a review of the literature
Jacqui Johnson


35. (Wo)men in the middle: the gendered role of supporting prisoners
Natalie Booth and Isla Masson with Ferzana Dakri


36. A holistic approach to understanding and responding to the multiple and complex needs of women prison leavers in Wales: breaking the cycle of homelessness and reoffending
Caroline Gorden and Kelly Lockwood


37. "It is nice to know that for once someone is not just saying that they're backing your corner, they are actually fucking backing your corner": The significance of relational factors in women's experiences of probation intervention
Natalie Rutter and Julie Eden-Barnard


38. Women, the pains of imprisonment and public health interventions
Jennifer Ferguson and Maggie Leese


39. A Darker Tale of Exceptionalism: How Punitive Drug Policies Impact Women's Experiences of Desistance in Sweden
Robin Gålnander and Linnéa Österman


40. Accounting for the gendered nature of 'collateral consequences' of a criminal record
Nicola A. Collett


41. A New Emancipatory Script: gendered post-sentence discrimination and experiences of reintegration
Caroline Bald, Rachel Tynan and Olivia Dehnavi


42. Experiencing the Juvenile Legal System as a Girl: Lessons from Gender-Responsive Approaches and Trauma-Informed Care
Nicole C McKenna, Valerie R Anderson, Eurielle Kiki, and Destinee L Starcher


43. Imprisoned Women's Experiences of Trust in Staff-Prisoner Relationships in an English Open Prison
Sarah Waite


44. Supervising women in the community: A view from Catalonia
Cristina Vasilescu


45. 'I don't know where to fit...how to fit back in...as a mum...as a person': Exploring the implications for practitioners of women's experiences of resettlement following short-term custody
Laura Haggar


46. "She has nothing really when she goes out of prison": Community-based practitioners' perceptions of young women's pathways through the criminal justice system in Scotland

Annie Rose Crowley

About the author

Isla Masson is a Criminologist and Researcher at The Open University. Her research interests include women in the criminal justice system, motherhood, incarceration, remand, care leavers and restorative justice. Her book Incarcerating Motherhood (Routledge, 2019) was based on her doctoral research, which explored the longevity of short terms of incarceration on mothers. She is a trustee at The Boaz Project, which is a therapeutic work environment for adults with learning disabilities, and previously volunteered with the Independent Monitoring Board.
Natalie Booth is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Bath Spa University. Her doctorate explored 'maternal imprisonment and family life' resulting in a book revealing the previously untold experiences of those charged with the responsibility of looking after children of female prisoners 'from the caregivers' perspectives' (2020). Her written work also contributes to our understanding about the maintenance of relationships and family contact during imprisonment, mothers and women in prison and developments in penal policy relating to women and families.

Summary

This Handbook brings together the voices of a range of contributors interested in the many varied experiences of women in criminal justice systems, and who are seeking to challenge the status quo.

Product details

• Authors: Isla (Arden University Masson
• Assisted by: Natalie Booth (Editor), Isla Masson (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 25.10.2022
• EAN: 9781032064307
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3206430-7
• No. of pages: 570
• Series: Routledge International Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Sociology, Medicine, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, Social issues & processes, Legal aspects of criminology, Police & security services, Gender studies: women, Social and ethical issues, Gender studies: women and girls, Penology and punishment, Prisons, Sentencing & punishment, Sentencing and punishment, Criminal justice law, Police and security services, Criminology: legal aspects, Probation services, Medicine and Nursing