Women, Crime, and the Media

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Media representation has always been a topic of debate, from representation of minority groups, individuals with mental illnesses and gender presentations. The latter, of course, turns mostly towards the female characters as they are presented in various medias; movies, news, and television shows. The representation of women in the media has always been leaning more towards ‘pleasing’ than it is towards informative or accurate. Representation of female offenders in the media has not deviated from the route that other representations of female factions has gone, focusing more on what is pleasing and entertaining than what is not harmful to the demographic as a whole. Women who are represented as offenders are done so in a way that is biased and very narrow in scope considering the sensitive topics that are covered under such an umbrella, and because the public generally does not have much contact with this particular faction, then there opinions are shaped wholly by what the media has to say about what these offenders are like, which is wholly inaccurate and harmful towards the women and girls that are involved with the criminal justice system.
Throughout the decades, interviews with police officers have led to show that there is a belief present almost in every generation, that female offenders are getting more and more violent, that they are “more violent than ever” (Davies & Pollock, 2005 pg. 5). Prompting for proof revealed further that the evidence for these given claims are the continuously more and more violent portrayals of women to be violent or “just as violent” as males, both by the media and by researchers in the field. By ignoring essential details, such as the fact that women are quite a bit more likely to be th...

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Cecil, D. K. (2007). Dramatic Portrayals of Violent Women: Female Offenders on Prime Time Crime Dramas. Journal Of Criminal Justice & Popular Culture, 14(3), 243-258.
Cecil, D. K. (2006). Violence, Privilege and Power: Images of Female Delinquents in Film. Women & Criminal Justice, 17(4), 63-84. doi:10.1300/J012v17n04-04
DeTardi-Bora, K. A. (2009). Criminal Justice “Hollywood Style”: How Women in Criminal Justice Professions Are Depicted in Prime-Time Crime Dramas. Women & Criminal Justice, 19(2), 153-168. doi:10.1080/08974450902791336
Farr, K. (2000). Defeminizing and Dehumanizing Female Murderers. Women & Criminal Justice, 11(1), 49-66. doi:10.1300/J012v11n01_03
Pollock, J. M., & Davis, S. M. (2005). The Continuing Myth of the Violent Female Offender. Criminal Justice Review (Sage Publications), 30(1), 5-29. doi:10.1177/0734016805275378

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