Criminology Without Masculinization

• NCJ Number: 79875
• Journal: Tijdschrift voor criminologie Volume: 21 Issue: 5 Dated: special issue (September/October 1979) Pages: 203-210
• Author(s): C I Dessaur
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 8 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Country: Netherlands

Annotation

The reasons for the lack of studies on female offenders and of women criminologists are elucidated.

Abstract

Most criminological studies that deal with women focus on a narrow group of female offenders and on female victims of crimes. New areas have been opened up in studies of women as victims of male aggression; a direct result of such research has been establishment of crisis shelters for abused women and children and of rape hot lines and centers. Recent 'feminist' criminological studies have called attention to the dubious treatment of abused and raped women by both the police and the Dutch criminal justice system. Other research seeks to show through self-report studies that the dark numbers for women's involvement in crime have increased as women have become more emancipated. Still another approach to demasculinizing criminology is examination of why criminality and crime prevention are so male-oriented and of what fundamental social attitudes associate criminology with masculinity. The usual image projected by criminological theory is that of the strictly determined social machine in which human beings are subject to random social processes and passive adaptive mechanisms. Researchers frequently seek to unravel the deterministic rules to facilitate offender treatment, without questioning the underlying social structures, e.g., prostitution would not be a problem if the prostitute did not have customers. Women have no role in the power structure encompassing criminals and representatives of the law. Women victims are intimidated and exploited, while female offenders are viewed as psychologically disturbed and incapable of taking responsibility for their deviant action. It is emphasized that individuals must resist the view of humans as automatons in modern technocratic states and the accompanying economic exploitation and discrimination. Notes are supplied.