One of the key issues when dealing with research surrounding female criminality is the reality that research on female criminality is severely lacking in comparison to the volumes of research dedicated to male criminality. Whether researching theft, assaults, sex offenses, and even domestic violence; the research overwhelmingly focuses on male perpetrators and leaves women out of the research almost entirely. Society, it would appear, seems to believe women incapable of being aggressors or perpetrators to such a filthy thing as criminal activity. However, by ignoring women’s capability of aggression and criminal behavior, society is doing a gross disservice to the victims of female-perpetrated crime. Sex offenses, in particular, have had a …show more content…
This belief has various problems with the message it sends to victims and perpetrators. By believing the idea that women cannot rape society sends the message that victims of female-perpetrated sexual assaults are not ‘real’ victims and because there are no ‘real’ victims the women that offend are also not considered ‘real’ offenders. Society then further minimizes the damage done by women offenders, and hence further reinforces the belief that women cannot be violent. When it comes to lack of research, one can tell an immediate difference in the way that male and female sex offenders are classified. There are numerous classifications for both male rapists and male child sex offenders, yet there are only a few classifications for females at all. That alone speaks for how little research has attempted to understand the motivations for female offenders as well as their characteristics. One of the most cited source for sex offender typologies comes from Robertiello and Terry’s (2007) classification system. In their system, they break down general (male) rapist typologies into compensatory, sadistic, power/control, and opportunistic (Robertiello & Terry, …show more content…
The classification for child molesters are fixed offenders, regressed offenders, situational offenders (which include regressed, morally indiscriminate, sexually indiscriminate, and inadequate), as well as preferential offenders (which include seductive, fixated, and sadistic). Compared to all thirteen different classifications for male sex offenders, there are only a few female sex offender classifications: teacher/lover, male coerced, exploration-exploitation, psychologically disturbed, and predisposed (West & Friedman, 2011). Besides the sheer difference in numbers, another issue with the typology differences between male and female offenders is the language used to classify them. Take for example, male child molesters: morally indiscriminate, sexually indiscriminate, and sadistic – all of these classifications sound criminal or in some way offensive to think about in regard to abusing children. Now compare it to teacher/lover, male-coerced, and exploration-exploitation. The male-coerced typology involves a passive woman who abuses due to an abusive male partner or a male-female couple who both equally abuse (West & Friedman,
It is a common stereotype that all sex offenders have some form of psychopathy, and therefore they cannot be treated, however most sexual offenders do not have major mental illness or psychological maladjustment (Ward, Polaschek and Busch, 2006), therefore it is not impossible to treat them. Finkelhor’s (1984) precondition model was made with the assumption that the psychopathology of an individual will only take us so far in explaining sexually abusive behaviour, Finkelhor states that 4 stages of preconditions must exist before sexual abuse can take place, these are; Primary motivation to abuse a child sexually, overcoming of internal and external inhibitions and dealing with a child’s resistance to sexual abuse, for each subsequent precondition to occur the previous one must be achieved. Finkelhor argues th...
So as you can see here there are many different ideas of why men become sex offenders. I think that they are all very valid, but I found the second book a lot easier to understand and I found that the reasoning behind it was a lot better because you had several situations where you could put a sex crime to a person and see what had gone wrong in the persons life that may have made the offend.
Although the years since Smart’s study have seen much more interest in the study of female crime and deviance, many general theories in this area continue to neglect gender as a factor influencing criminality. This is despite the fact that official figures suggest that gender is perhaps the most significant single factor in whether an individual is convicted of crime. Any theories which fail to explain this relationship could therefore be seen as inadequate. OFFICIAL STATISTICS, CRIMINALITY AND GENDER Pollak – the ‘masked’ female offender – ‘chivalry’ thesis Writing in 1950, Otto pollak argued that official statistics on gender and crime were highly misleading.
Chesney-Lind, M. (1986). Women And Crime: The Female Offender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12(1), 78.
Since 1970, there has been an increasing and alarming rise 138 percent of violent crimes committed by women. Still, while the equivalent percentage compared to male violence is small 15 percent to 85 percent the fact that the numbers have elevated so drastically points to something changing in society.
Cauffman, E., Grisso, T., & Sickmund, M. Future of Children. (2009) Understanding the Female Offender, 18, 5. Retrieved May 7, 2014, from www.futureofchildren.org
There are many topics nowadays that are still hard to talk about openly. Though we’ve opened the door on many controversies, some of the simplest parts of life can be the hardest to discuss. For most of us, sex in particular can be a taboo topic, which may be the reason why so many children and teens are misinformed on the inner workings of sexual relationships and how they develop as we grow and mature. For some adolescents, this can lead to an unhealthy fixation on the concept of sex, and in some cases, lead them to take action on a situation they do not fully understand. Sexual offenses are perceived as some of the most heinous crimes, but how could our views be affected if those acts were performed by a teenager? We may sometimes consider that they are the same as adult sex offenders; however our judgment can often be clouded by our lack of understanding. Adolescent sex offenders are different from adult sex offenders, are treated in a different way, and often have very different circumstances of their crime.
Studies indicate that the primary motivation(s) for this act of crime is, as stated before, to conquer and control the victim; to act out feelings of revenge; to resolve conflict with their own sexuality; and/or to gain status among fellow men for being an aggressor (When Men Are Raped). In those same studies it is shown that gay men and men of color are at a higher risk of being victimized, making it a hate crime (When Men Are Raped). The most hate rapes occur in prisons when the prisoners rape sexual offenders, especially those with juvenile victims, to “teach them a lesson”, not to mention that “4.5 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds in adult prison and 4.7 per cent of those in jail reported being the victims of sexual abuse” are targeted because they appear weaker and the other prisoners do it to teach them the “lesson” of not returning to prison (No Escape and Daily Mail Reporter). So, in actuality, in the United States males are raped more frequently than women are. In 2008 it was estimated that 216,000 male inmates are raped each year (Daily Mail Reporter). Unfortunately, these number may be higher because the prisoners know that if they report the abuse little to nothing
Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their crimes(Oakes 99). This presents a
When the criminal justice system was established, one of the goals was to create neutrality and fairness between the sexes. However, during those times, women were not known for behaving in such manners. If a woman did in fact take part in any criminal activities, those crimes would have been blames on an individual that could of not fought for themselves. Even though people might believe that there is no such thing as ‘stereotyping’ in the criminal justice system, it is quite obvious that women are constantly being looked down upon because of their sex. In general, women tend to be treated like fragile objects that could break at any moment; the truth is that women can behave like men. Society stereotypes women; and, the criminal justice system is no different. When it comes to the stereotyping of women in the criminal justice system, society presents women who are indeed capable of committing such crimes as victims because by doing do they can achieve a lesser sentence or if necessary a longer sentence that will protect them from any harm.
A study produced by Terranova & Vandiver (2014) targeted the differences between female and male offenders and how their crimes differed from one another. This study attempted to view the most common crime for each of the two sexes along with if these offenders were more likely to offend alone or with another person or group. Crimes that have a female offender present were more likely to not only have at least one female victim, but was also found more likely to have multiple victims overall (Terranova & Vandiver, 2014). Researchers Terranova & Vandiver (2014) also made future victim predictions based on this study. It was hypothesized that as the gap between male and female offenders diminishes, consequently the number of female victims of violent crime will ultimately continue to rise (Terranova & Vandiver, 2014).
There are several theories as to why people rape; some include biological factors or personal factors that lead the sub-conscious choice to commit such a heinous crime on an individual. In this case the theory of power and control will be analyzed and discussed. To begin, the act of rape can be committed by anyone, male, female, transgender, etc. But in most cases it is carried about by the male gender on women, visible minorities or LGBTQ+ men and women. 99% of sex offenders in single-victim attack were male.
This article examines the effect of gender on crime in violent offenses. In the article, authors attempt to identify the cause of change in the difference between the amount of criminal offenses made by females and males, also known as gender gap. The authors used data from a variety of sources including the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the Nation Crime Survey (NCS) to research gender differences in violent offenses. “The NCS and NCVS ask respondents about whether specific behaviors have occurred, and typically the responses are used by researchers to code incidents using the official definitions of violent crimes in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) UCR” (Lauritsen, Heimer, and Lynch 366).
Rapist are product of “defective urban cultures that espouse perverse ideals of masculinity” This idea of men having to be stronger than women has been seen through many cultures. Sexual violence is seen as one of the ways in which working class men demonstrate masculinity. There is also a link between alcohol and sexual violence against women which is a big problem in urban areas. In the modern day there has been an entry of women into the labor market. The idea that women were just here to have kids and take care of them no longer existed. Men had to change that thought of them being the only provider of the house. This brought the feeling of men being superior. Men having to show that they are more dominant. This happened in many ways and one was through sexual
However, experts have revealed that girls using violence, or associating with violent peer groups, were at an added risk of sexual violence including rape as retaliation, multiple perpetrator rape and sexual exploitation (Weller, 2010). This is due to the specific ways in which sexual violence was used. The girls who query the gender regime (Connell, 1987) are also at a greater risk of sexual violence, as a form of punishment, including the girls who end friendships or relationships with the offending group. Women as Property After looking at the link between young women’s violent offending and their experiences of sexual violence, experts state that women were viewed as ‘property’ or ‘objects’ for male use (Weller, 2010). Offenders operated within a gender regime (Connell 1987) which was based on control and ended in young women being utilised to meet male demands (Weller, 2010).