In the name of love: A narrative analysis of a Chinese single mother's rational and emotional pathways into and out of crime

Adopting rational choice theory, this study assesses both rational and emotional aspects in understanding pathways into and out of crime through the narrative analysis of a Chinese female offender living in Hong Kong, China. We found that poverty enmeshed this divorced, single mother in a commitment problem with a moral dilemma entwined with rational and emotional considerations. We argue that emotional themes, including sadness, hope, love, satisfaction, frustration, and faith should be taken into consideration to fully understand women's choices in committing or desisting from crimes. Understanding this single mother's gendered and reasonable emotional expression and incorporating moral considerations into her rationale are pivotal in extending rational choice theory to successful prevention of female crime and the correction and desistance of female offenders.     

Cohabitation,Relationship Quality,and Desistance From Crime

Although the empirical links between marriage and desistance are well established, very little is known about the degree to which cohabitation is associated with changes in criminal behavior. This is a significant oversight given that, among some segments of the population, cohabitation has become more common than marriage. In this article, the author investigated the links between cohabitation and desistance from crime. In doing so, particular attention was paid to the possibility that similarities between the apparent effects of marriage and cohabitation are obscured by variations in relationship quality and the increasing tendency for cohabitation to precede marriage. Analyses based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 3,232) indicate that cohabitation is associated with reductions in the rate of property and drug offending, but not the termination of violent, property, or drug offending. By contrast, marriage is consistently associated with large reductions in the rate of offending across the 3 crime categories as well as the abandonment of those crimes. These results provide greater insight into the links between adult family relationships, such as cohabitation and marriage, and desistance from crime.     

Scientific Acedia

Abstract

Using a gendered context, this paper examines women's fear management strategies. Using twenty-six in-depth interviews with married and divorced participants, the researcher considers one question: “How does gender influence fear management strategies among newly married and divorced women?” Results depict a unique intersection between strategies women use to manage fear of crime and the ways they “do gender” that vary by the marriage context, providing insight into women's fear of crime.     

Why we should think some more. A response to ‘When you’re boxing you don’t think so much’: pugilism,transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members

This paper forms part of a discussion with scholars working in the field of criminology and youth crime, in particular those who are interested in sport, gender, and desistance from violence. Furthermore, this paper challenges previous work into the sport of boxing and desistance from violence, and therefore argues for a more nuanced approach, by incorporating more feminist epistemologies, and inclusive masculinities into this complex phenomenon. Drawing upon contemporary research, this paper discusses prior literature on sport and desistance from violence, and further develops the concept of sport as a tool for reduction in violent youth crime.     

Women's fear of crime: A rural perspective

This paper examines women's experience of fear of crime in rural areas. It argues that much existing research on issues of gender, fear and safety have focused on urban areas and that as a result we know relatively little about women's experience of fear in a rural context. As well as arguing that we need to redress the balance and respond to the dearth of knowledge about rural women's fear, the paper asserts the importance of a rural perspective in understanding the relationship between fear and the social and cultural construction of place. The rural in particular provides an important site for such an understanding since, as is argued here, the notion of safety is central to constructions of rurality. The paper presents data on rural women's experience of fear and crime from research carried out in New Zealand and the UK. It draws on work undertaken in four rural communities and begins to identify the extent and nature of women's fears and how these relate to their experience of rurality. The paper shows how while popular constructions of the rural as friendly, safe and largely crime free endure, there is a recognition amongst rural women of the growing problems surrounding personal safety. It also demonstrates the importance of social constructions of the rural community in identifying the relevance of the ‘stranger’ and the marginalised ‘other’ to women's feelings of fear.     

Adolescent Offenders' Qualitative Reflections on Desistance From Crime

Although many young offenders desist from crime during adolescence, little is known about this process. This study used a qualitative approach to elucidate adolescent offenders' experiences in desisting from crime. Thirty‐nine male adolescent offenders (M_age = 16.59 years) participated in a semistructured interview about the desistance process. One of four themes characterized adolescents' reflections on their own desistance: having a psychological reorientation, reacting to consequences, persisting, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Adolescents discussed five agentic moves they make to facilitate desistance: seeking and maintaining supportive relationships, navigating peer groups, working toward long‐term goals, structuring time, and finding sanctuaries from the outside. These findings highlight adolescents' strengths, resources, and active role in desisting from crime.     

‘When you're boxing you don't think so much’: pugilism,transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members

This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to find avenues for alternative identity construction and to gain transitional experiences which trigger self-confessed desistance actions. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted in a boxing rehabilitation centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark, the paper reports on data gleaned from participant observation and qualitative interviews with 22 ethnic minority young men. Findings suggest that the masculine context within the rehabilitation programme provided the young men with a safe space to perform broader versions of locally dominated views on masculinity and to reflect on their current situations and dilemmas. The young men were clearly in transition and their desistance journeys were characterized by hope and ambition but also disappointment and despair. In some cases it appeared that the young men's dogged attempts to desist from crime became a new way for them to ‘do masculinity’. The authors draw upon the findings to make recommendations for policy, practice and research.     

Female Crime Fighters in Television and Film: Implications and Future Directions

This article examines the literature surrounding images of the female crime fighter in fictionalized television and film. The continued growth of the crime drama, alongside stagnant growth of women in law enforcement, necessitates a closer look at this genre. Current media images serve to reinforce women's roles as either support for male crime fighters and/or as highly sexualized members of the force. Work in this area demonstrates a large‐scale reinforcement of constructed gender norms that may impact how the women are treated on the job as well as their overall retention and recruitment in law enforcement. More scholarly focus on the media representations and related impacts is called for.     

Southeastern Women's Involvement in Sustainable Development Efforts: Their Roles and Concerns

Summary

Sustainable development takes into account the social and economic needs of people in communities, as well as the urgent concerns for environmental protection. Women's roles in sustainable development are of particular interest in light of the numerous environmentally related grassroots development initiatives taken by women throughout the world. In preparation for a participatory forum addressing women's roles in sustainable development, we conducted a survey among representatives from Southeastern grassroots organizations working on community development projects. The results indicate a sustainable development focus in grassroots women's development efforts, as well as a need for networking, skills training, and opportunities to share project experience.     

Appraising a Dichotomy: A Review of ‘Part-time/Full-time’ in the Study of Women's Employment in Britain

A key theme in women's studies is the move away from an over-reliance on treating the sexes as two separate groups onto theorizing diversity amongst women. The limitations of a ‘sexual dichotomism’ in the face of diversity is well-recognized, yet in mainstream research into women's experiences diversity is far from being a popular area of study. The tendency in the literature on women's employment is still to oversimplify any divisions into broad groupings, and in particular into dichotomies. Focusing on the popular dichotomy of part-time/full-time employment, the paper highlights two roles that the dichotomy has been expected to perform. The success it has achieved and the problems it has faced in performing these two roles are examined. The conclusion is that whilst the part-time/full-time dichotomy is particularly valuable in depicting two differentiated labour market positions, a move beyond the dichotomy would facilitate a greater understanding of the variations in women's employment experiences over the life-course. The theoretical progression from dichotomizing to disaggregation is ready to happen in the field of women's employment.     

Awakening to the desires of older women: Deconstructing ageism within fashion magazines

Older women's body image is multidimensional, changes across lifespan, and is a significant source of self-esteem. Ageist social practices in popular fashion magazines and the reluctance of the fashion industry to recognize the sartorial needs of female baby boomer cohorts feed into an internalization of naturally aging women's bodies as socially undesirable. Depression and/or eating disorders are associated with negative internalizations of body image. Despite baby boomers being the most affluent female social group in the United States history and the fashion industry's enormous social influence on women's self-image, few studies have examined the depiction of older women in fashion magazines. Visual content analysis of eight fashion magazines revealed that the fashion industry continues to focus its promotional efforts on youthful populations and seldom includes images of women over forty, regardless of the large percentage of such women among their readership.     

The use of ‘empowerment’ among organisations supporting victims of domestic violence in Sweden

The aim of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and character of ‘empowerment’ as an approach used by women's shelters, crime victim support groups and municipal crisis centres that provide support for battered women in Sweden. The study was based on a mail survey distributed among representatives of local crime victim support groups and women's shelters run by non-governmental organisations and the public sector (N = 207). The survey showed that empowerment was perceived as similar to the already established ‘help to self-help’ approach. Empowerment was described as a tool for individual change rather than collective action, although links to power-sensitivity and social change did appear in some answers. Contrary to expectations, the use of empowerment was not accompanied by comments on problematic power relations and difficulties in merging a non-directive approach with professional responsibilities. Using neo-institutional theory, results were interpreted in relation to established work-patterns and problems that empowerment was perceived to solve.     

Trends in Female Violence, 1960–1977

Abstract

This paper examines the issue of whether levels of female violent crime are rising. Two differing viewpoints, both using the Uniform Crime Reports as their principal data source, are compared. Both viewpoints suffer because of a failure to specify the major questions on female violent crime and because of inappropriate usage of UCR arrest statistics. The central questions about female violent crime are clarified, and arrest rates are computed to determine whether there has been any change in levels of female violent crime since 1960. The effects of the women's movement on female violent crime are also examined. The conclusion is that female levels of violence are rising, but male levels are increasing at an equal pace. The pattern of the data suggests that the upward trend in female violence, which now appears to be leveling off, is not due to the women's movement or to the changing status of women in the United States. Instead it appears that common social forces are operating to affect levels of violence for both sexes.     

Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

Abstract There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the ‘costs to families’ of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant‐sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low‐income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.     

Dealing with Difference in Desistance Theory: The Promise of Intersectionality for New Avenues of Inquiry

The last two decades have witnessed a rapid growth in research and theorizing about the desistance process, namely the causal mechanisms behind the termination or slowing of offending that frequently accompany adulthood. This flurry of scholarly activity has been spurred by both the ascendance of the life course paradigm of criminology, which examines patterns of criminal offending over the life span, but also by the very real practical demands of supporting the transitions of over 700,000 former prisoners released to their communities each year. The field of desistance theory has expanded upon its original formulations that were largely (although not exclusively) based on White males and has recently turned to examining (1) the potential invariance of desistance processes for members of other groups and (2) the unique experiences of reentry and pathways to desistance for sub‐groups. In this essay, we review these recent developments, particularly as they relate to women, persons of color, and incarcerated youth. Finally, we turn to the intersectionality framework, which examines the social location of individuals within interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability, among others). We conclude with some suggestions for how intersectionality could be used to expand the conceptual and practical boundaries of research on desistance and reentry.     

Cultural Sexism is Ordinary: Writing and Re‐Writing Women in Academia

When we ‘write women’ in academia, the focus in much of the literature to date has been to write about women. The focus of this article is the writing of women themselves; to give voice to women's experiences as constructors of knowledge. Through so doing this article uses writing as praxis; as a mechanism to disrupt, challenge and open a space for renegotiation of cultural norms within academic institutions. Based on qualitative data collection over a six‐year period, this article writes women's experiences and unpacks the way in which cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women's academic lives. It also considers ways in which the underlying cultural interpretations of hegemonic masculinized structures may be re‐written.     

Recidivism,Redemption, and Desistance: Understanding Continuity and Change in Criminal Offending and Implications for Interventions

As the US incarceration rate has reached an unprecedented level, so has the number of people leaving prison and returning to the community. Faced with the prison population growth together with the economic downturn and budget crises, many states are seeking ways to break the increasing cycle of recidivism. Although research on recidivism and desistance has not always learned from each other, recently, there is an increasing convergence of these two streams of research. This convergence has been stimulated by a variety of factors, but most notably, it draws from emerging research on redemption, which focuses on the inverse relationship between recidivism risk and time since previous contact with the criminal justice system. Although the concepts of recidivism, desistance, and redemption are all about continuity and change in criminal offending over time, the relationship between the three has not been examined. In this paper, we discuss the interface between recidivism and desistance research with a particular focus on redemption research; point out one emerging consensus from both recidivism and desistance research, namely, the importance of offenders' motivation and individual internal change; and discuss new ideas to effectively improve our approaches of reducing recidivism and facilitating desistance.     

Intimate Violence against Rural Women: The Current and Future State of Feminist Empirical and Theoretical Contributions

Rural crime in general ranks among the least studied social problems in the social sciences; however, a growing body of research shows that rural woman abuse is a major problem. The current state of progressive critical feminist social scientific knowledge enhances an empirical and theoretical understanding of intimate violence against rural women. Revealing the complexities of rural women's experiences and struggles with violent relationships reconstitutes violence against women as a public crisis that requires continued serious attention with regard research, theory, and policy. Three primary objectives of this article are as follows: (i) briefly review recent feminist social scientific literature on research, methodology, and theoretical contributions on violence against women in rural areas, (ii) suggest new directions in researching and theorizing rural women's experiences with intimate violence, and (iii) offer creative practical and policy solutions towards a broad vision of social change.     

Marriage and Offending: Examining the Significance of Marriage among the Children of Immigrants

Although research shows that involvement in crime varies across immigrant generations, less is known about why this is so. Using 13 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data, we examine the influence of marriage—a key correlate of desistance from crime—to understand more fully patterns of offending across immigrant generations during the transition to adulthood. Results indicate a lower prevalence of offending among first‐generation immigrants compared with their second‐generation and third‐plus‐generation peers; however, among active offenders, rates of offending are similar across groups. Notably, marriage exerts a significantly stronger effect on offending for second‐generation immigrants, suggesting that, while assimilation may be associated with more offending, it is also associated with a greater potency of marriage in promoting desistance from crime.     

Gender and post-conflict civil society

Abstract

Women have historically participated in revolutionary/liberation movements. A consensus among scholars working in the field suggests that once the broader aims of the movement have been achieved, women's public role and the concern for gender differentiated interests diminish in the post-conflict society. The aim of this study is to apply this hypothesis using the case study of Eritrea. Eritrea offers an opportunity to study a modern, successful revolutionary movement that relied heavily upon women's contributions both as support personnel and as front-line soldiers. Preliminary evidence suggests that Eritrea is following the pattern of many other post-conflict societies. Several questions are addressed here: Does the hypothesis which suggests women's participation is welcomed during a revolutionary struggle, but discouraged in post-conflict society, hold true in the Eritrean case? What role did women play in Eritrean independence and what role do they currently play? Have the reforms enacted by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) carried forward under the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ)? What role does women's inclusion play in creating a viable civil society? How has the generational aspect of women's military service affected society's overall perception of women?