NCJ Number
148614
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1993) Pages: 559-583
Date Published
1993
Length
25 pages
Annotation
A sample of 85 women who were arrested, incarcerated, or both for violent street crimes in New York City in 1990 was interviewed to determine when and how women become involved in violent street crime.
Abstract
Results suggest that an adequate understanding of female offending must consider the impact of neighborhood, peer, and addiction factors that affect both males' and females' participation in criminal violence. In addition, different combinations of these factors appear to contribute to the initiation of violent offending, depending on the age of onset. Early initiation into violent crime was accompanied by participation in a wide variety of other offending behaviors and deviant lifestyles. In contrast, those women who began their violent offending later did so in the context of a criminal career that, until the beginning of drug abuse, was more specialized and focused on typically nonviolent, female-congruent activities such as prostitution and shoplifting. Tables, footnotes, appended table, and 83 references (Author abstract modified)