The Nature of Criminal Persistence by Females

Very little work has focused on studying recidivism by offenders after punishment and how prevention measures may improve recidivism rates and affect cooperation. “National recidivism rates are at an estimated amount of 73% and of the whole jail population 42.5% are women” (Berenji, 2014, p.131). As you can see about half of the inhabitants of the jails are women; so recidivism is an ongoing issue that needs to be solved. Recidivism is a growing distress in the U.S today, not only with men but women as well. Not many studies have been steered towards women reverting back to crime as there are men, but it is a concern. It is impossible to make this issue disappear fully, but with fundamental changes the

Bradley R. E. Wright, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt and Ray Paternoster Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 2004 41: 180 DOI: 10.1177/0022427803260263 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/41/2/180

From the stated statistics it is clear that female criminal behaviour has changed in recent years and has risen a great deal. Denscombe (Chapman & Langley, 2010) offers an explanation for this development suggesting new changes in society that see's women becoming more like men, taking up more masculine activities, roles and opportunities that have risen out of having a more equal society which in previous decades would not have been socially accepted. This wave of risk taking behaviour and 'ladette' culture leads to further types of behaviour that often lead to arrest, e.g. binge drinking, violence. Other male adopted behaviours can lead to gang involvement were women take on a 'tomboy' role and are treated as men (Hagedorn, 1998)

Noted originally in Belknap’s studies (as cited in Covington, 2007, p. 2) “research confirms that women offenders differ significantly from their male counterparts in terms of their personal histories and how they enter into crime.” For example, in the US they are more likely to be a young, undereducated, single parent who is a racial

Back in the 1970’s, a man named Ted Bundy admitted to killing 36 people and potentially could have killed over 100 people all just because he “wanted to” (Hammon). I did not want to look into the mind of someone who wants to kill but I wanted to look into how more men are reported to feel this way rather than women. I looked into the differences of men’s and women’s minds in terms of crime. Men and women have many alike traits, but there are many differences that separate them in the crimes that they commit.

It appears from current trends that the rates of crime committed on part of female violators is trending higher as compared to that of male counterparts that comprise the population starting in the year 2000 with female prison population rising to 2.2% verses that of male prison incarceration numbers being only 1.6% in comparison (Sipes, 2012). However it should be noted that the total number of actual prisoners of males is estimated to be 1.5 million with only 113,000 being women or just 14% of the total prison

Research and theories often have an undertone, if not blatantly describing the male offender. However, there is another gender, that also participates in criminal behavior. Although the violent female offender is not as prevalent as violent male offender, reason being women and men have different triggers that create the outward violent behavior. The violent behavior shown by male offenders some time is motivated by money, sexual desires, and possibly power. Women, however have other way of obtaining money or satisfying sexual desires that don’t include violent behavior and sometimes not even criminal behavior. Women by nature are nurturing and in general don’t pursue power in the way that the male offender does. Women typically commit violent

In addition, Stuart and Brice-Baker (2004) found that the rise in female criminal behavior and incarceration can be attributed to changes in women’s behavior and changes in the drug laws. The rate of drug sales, use, and addiction has increased, which has caused the number of women incarcerated for drug related crimes to increase. Although drug dealing has commonly been seen as a male dominated criminal activity, women have become more involved in the distribution

Starting at an adolescent age in females life events greatly impact future behaviors. The "purpose of relationships" i.e. family, friends, and intimate relationships play big roles in shaping ones character. In being either a victim and or witness to situations that include domestic violence relate to future criminal activity. Emotional disorders also arise if physical or sexual abuse occurs. Female offenders may go on having abusive relationships and committing crimes based on their adolescence (McAleavy, T. 2009). Myths and misconception of juvenile female offenders would be risk factors. Risk factors may affect both females and males. Females are impacted at a much higher level. Between females and males, females commit crimes more so in the lower level of crimes but criminal behavior has increased over the years. Mental illness in juvenile female offenders are elevated compared to juvenile male offenders. In conclusion female offending has and does play a role in our society. Statically over the past years, numbers seem to show decreases in certain areas of law-breaking. But in today's age there has been an increased growth in criminal activities overall for males and females. Gaining the proper knowledge about this specific subject will allow experts to find solutions in reducing criminal

Female Criminality consists of several outdated statistics regarding the rise of female offending. However, in viewing the current research on the subject, it appears that the overall theme of this dissertation's discussion is still relevant despite changes in the accompanying statistics as seen in viewing the following topics: the rise in female offending; the continual rise that females are committing more crimes than men; and the types of crimes that women are committing. In viewing Bruce Gross's 2009 article, "Battle of the Sexes: The Nature of Female Delinquency," as well as Elizabeth Cauffman's 2008 article, "Understanding the Female Offender," one can begin to see where current statistics regarding the female criminal lie.

Involvement of women in the criminal justice system has been notably increasing (Bottos, 2007). This increase has been astounding in the United States; women represented 12,300 of offenders incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the year 1980, that number has risen to 182, 271 as of 2002 (Grant, 2007). A study done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that “drug offenses represented the largest share of growth in the number of female offenders” (Covington, p.2). It was also noted that 71% of all female arrests are for drug-related offenses (Grant, 2007), and of female offenders in Canadian Federal institutions 80% have substance abuse problems (Matheson, Grant, and Doherty, 2008). Therefore on the basis of empirical support it

Violent offenders are readily one of the most interesting topics of criminal justice. In 2015, blank percent of crime was accounted for by homicide, robbery, assault, and more. Research on violent offenders typically focuses on male offenders, however, emerging research has focused more on violent female offenders. A small amount of studies that have examined violent offenders using an intersectional approach have found that offenders often differ in their acts based on gender, race, class, and other structural factors (Bernard, 2013; Potter, 2013; Baskin & Sommers, 1993; Miller, 1998 add more). These differences could be due to various elements and constructs; however, it is something to further explore as they can relate back to systems of inequality.

The housing of women in correctional facilities has continued to develop since the first female correctional facility was opened in 1873. While this concept has evolved since then, the objectives of corrections have remained similar as it's geared towards incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. Nonetheless, the impact of these objectives on male and female criminals is an issue that has been rarely discussed despite of the fact that gender differences have been critical in many correctional issues. Unlike male offenders, many female offenders are increasingly serving prison sentences related to drug and property offenses. As a result, several correctional facilities have indicated that various factors are relevant to female criminals such as self-esteem, mental health care, trauma, parenting, assertiveness, child care, and abuse (Brooks, 2007). Due to these differences, several concerns have emerged on whether women should be housed in the same correctional facilities as men or whether they should have their own correctional facilities.

　　　　Fines are preferable to imprisonment and other types of punishment because they are more efficient. With a fine, the punishment to offenders is also revenue to the State. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, females are account for 14 percent of the violent crimes. The growing rate of females incarceration calls for a critical evaluation of social impact of our nation’s increasing reliance on correctional facilities to deal with women involvement in crime. The challenges that females face in court system it different from males. When a female is under correctional supervision, she can face several challenges within her sentence. When females reenter the community they can face a lot of barriers. Female offenders go through obstacles during conviction,sentencing, incarceration, and rehabilitation.

The social process and traditional structure theory explained why female crime rates are rather lower than males. The social process theory tend to explain the traditional crime with regards to differential opportunity to lean criminal techniques and values. The use of the traditional theory shows evidence in which considered the overlap on the causes of crimes committed by both genders. Studies shows that both male and female offenders that came in contact with the criminal justice system often came from a social background that are typically of low socioeconomic status, poorly educated, under or unemployed, and minority groups (Steffensmeir and Allan, 1995). The only difference between male and female offenders is, female