NCJ Number
128706
Date Published
1991
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This essay identifies the contributions of feminist perspectives to criminal justice policy.
Abstract
Feminist perspectives have exposed basic limitations of the dominant paradigms in criminology. Social contract theory, which is the basis of liberal democracy and continues to ground legal and judicial practice, holds that the State, including law, must respect the private sphere and leave it largely unregulated. Feminist political theorists note that this division was conceived by men, since for women the private sphere is more a workplace than a haven for pursuing self-expression and leisure. Feeling imprisoned and ignored in the privacy realm, women in liberal democracies have historically fought for increased access to the public realms of waged work and politics while claiming more rights in the private sphere (e.g., custody rights over their children). Feminist perspectives have also challenged positivist criminology, which conceives people as objects to be studied but not as fully rational subjects in their own right. This framework continues to be applied more to women offenders than to men. Scholars using feminist perspectives have not been searching for a grand theory to fit women offenders, but rather aim to challenge basic social categories and their implications for social organization and control: family, civil society, the State, criminal and civil law, deviance, and normality. Such scholars analyze criminal law in conjunction with other areas of law, and all legal analyses are linked to broader issues of social justice. 72-item annotated bibliography