Some researchers suggest that crime pathways are gendered and that different
paths may be revealed depending on the point of contact with the criminal
justice system. Drawing from the feminist and age-of-onset literatures, we
examine the life experiences of a sample of ‘high-risk’
women to assess whether their offending pathways into jail are consistent with
those predicted by earlier research.We find substantial overlaps with feminist
pathways, but notable differences as well — differences that may lie
with which populations are under study (jailed and awaiting trial/disposition
versus convicted felons; by racial composition). Sorting the women by onset age
(early, adolescent, and adult), we discover a sizeable group of adult onset
offenders (54%). Compared with those who begin offending earlier, these late
onset women appear to have distinct risk factors.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ArmourS.HaynieD.L. (2007). Adolescent Sexual Debut and
Later Delinquency. Journal of Youth and
Adolescence, 36,
141-152.
2.
BartuschD.LynamD.R.MoffittT.E.SilvaP.A. (1997). Is age important? Testing a
general versus a developmental theory of antisocial
behavior. Criminology, 35,
13-48.
3.
BaskinD.R.SommersE.B. (1998). Casualties of community disorder:
Women's careers in violent crime. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
4.
BelknapJ. (2006). The invisible woman; Gender, crime,
and justice (3rd ed.). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth.
5.
BelliR.F. (1998). The Structure of
Autobiographical Memory and the Event History Calendar: Potential
improvements in the quality of retrospective reports in
surveys. Memory, 6,
383-406.
6.
BelliR.F.ShayW.L.StaffordF.P. (2001). Event History Calendars and
Question List Surveys. Public Opinion
Survey, 65,
45-74.
7.
BlumsteinA.CohenJ.FarringtonD.P. (1988). Criminal career research:
Its value for criminology. Criminology,
26, 1-35.
8.
BlumsteinA.CohenJ.RothJ.A.VisherC.A. (1986). Criminal careers and
‘career criminals’ (Vol.1). Washington, DC:
National Academy Press.
9.
BrittonD.M. (2000). Feminism in criminology:
Engendering the outlaw. Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 571,
57-76.
10.
CairnsR.B.KrollA.B. (1994). Developmental perspectives
on gender differences and similarities.
InRutterM.HayD.F.(Eds.), Development through life: A
handbook for clinicians (pp.350-372). Oxford:
Blackwell Scientific.
11.
CoutureH.L. (2007). Explaining adult offending using a
general strain approach (Working paper). College
Park, MD: Department of Criminology and
Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College
Park.
12.
DalyK. (1992). Women's pathways to felony
court: Feminist theories of lawbreaking and problems of
representation. Review of Law and Women's
Studies, 2,
11-52.
13.
DalyK. (1994). Gender, crime, and
punishment. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
14.
DalyK. (1998). Women's pathways to felony
court. InDalyK.MaherL.(Eds.), Criminology at the
crossroads (pp.135-154). New York:
Oxford University Press.
15.
DalyK.Chesney-LindM. (1988). Feminism and
criminology. Justice Quarterly,
5, 497-538.
16.
EgglestonE.LaubJ. (2002). The onset of adult
offending: A neglected dimension of the criminal career.
Journal of Criminal Justice, 30,
603-622.
17.
FarringtonD.P.LambertS.WestD.J. (1998). Criminal careers of two
generations of family members in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent
Development. Studies on Crime and Crime
Prevention, 7,
85-106.
GottfredsonM.HirschiT. (1990). A general theory of crime.
Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
20.
HenryB.MoffittT.E.CaspiA.LangleyJ.SilvaP.A. (1994). On the
‘Remembrance of things past’: A longitudinal
evaluation of the retrospective method.
Psychological Assessment, 6,
92-101.
21.
HeimerK. (1995). Gender, race, and pathways
to delinquency: An interactionist analysis.
InHaganJ.D. PetersonR(Eds.), Crime and inequality.
Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
22.
HeimerD.DeCosterS. (1999). The gendering of violent
delinquency. Criminology,
37, 277-317.
23.
HilsingerK.HolsingerA.M. (2007). Differential pathways to
violence and self-injurious behavior: African American and White girls in
the juvenile justice system. Journal of Research in
Crime and Delinquency, 42,
211-242.
24.
HorneyJ.OsgoodD.W.MarshallI.H. (1995). Criminal careers in the
short-term: Intraindividual variability in crime and its relation to local
life circumstances. American Sociological
Review, 60(5),
655-673.
25.
JansonC.G. (1990). Retrospective data,
undesirable behavior, and the longitudinal perspective.
InMagnussonD.R. BergmanL(Eds.), Data quality in longitudinal
research (pp.100-121). Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University
Press.
26.
KruttschnittC. (1996). Contributions of
quantitative methods to the study of gender and crime, or bootstrapping our
way into the theoretical thicket. Journal of
Quantitative Criminology, 12(2),
135-161.
27.
LaubJ.H.SampsonR.J. (2003). Shared beginnings, divergent lives:
Delinquent boys to age 70. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University
Press.
28.
MaherL.DunlapD.JohnsonB.D. (2002). Black women's pathways to
involvement in illicit drug distribution and sales: An exploratory
ethnographic analysis. InBrochuS.DaAgra C.M. CousineauM(Eds.)Drugs and crime deviant pathways (pp.167). Aldershot, England:
Ashgate Publishing.
MillerJ.WhiteN.A. (2003). Gender and adolescent
relationship violence: A contextual exanimation.
Criminology, 41,
1207-1248.
31.
MillerE. (1986). Street women.
Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.
32.
MoffittT.E. (1993). The neuropsychology of
conduct disorder. Development and
Psychopathology, 5,
135-52.
33.
MoffittT.E.CaspiA.RutterM.SilvaP.A. (2001). Sex differences in antisocial
behaviour; Conduct disorder, delinquency, and violence in the Dunedin
Longitudinal Study. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University
Press.
34.
MoffittT. E.CaspiA.DicksonN.SilvaP.StantonW. (1996). Childhood-onset versus
adolescent-onset antisocial conduct problems in males: Natural history from
ages 3 to 18 years. Development and
Psychopathology, 8,
399-424.
35.
MorrisN.SlocumL.A. (2002). The validity of self-reported
criminal justice involvement; An evaluation of data collected using a Life
Events Calendar. Unpublished manuscript:
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University
of Maryland/College Park.
36.
MullinsC.WrightR. (2003). Gender, social networks, and
residential burglary. Criminology,
41, 813-840.
37.
NaginD.S.FarringtonT.P.MoffittT.E. (1995). Life-course trajectories of
different types of offenders. Criminology,
33(1),
111-139.
38.
PattersonG.R.YoergerK. (1993). Developmental models for
delinquent behavior. InHodginsS.(Ed.), Mental disorders and
crime. Newbury Park, CA:
SAGE Publications.
39.
PiqueroA.R.FarringtonD.P.BlumsteinA. (2003). The criminal career
paradigm. InCrime and Justice, Volume30 (pp.359-506). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
40.
ReisigM.D.HoltfreterK.MorashM. (2006). Accessing recidivism risk
across female pathways to crime. Justice
Quarterly, 23,
384-405.
41.
RichieB.E. (1994). Gender entrapment: An
exploratory study. InReframing Women's Health (pp.219-232). Newbury Park,
CA: SAGE Publications.
42.
RichieB.E. (1996). Compelled to crime: The gender
entrapment of battered black women. New
York: Routledge.
43.
SampsonR. LaubJ. (1993). Crime in the making; Pathways and
turning points through life. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University
Press.
44.
SiegelJ.A.WilliamsL.M. (2003). The relationship between
child sexual abuse and female delinquency and crime: A prospective
study. Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency, 40,
71-94.
45.
SimpsonS.S.ElisL. (1995). Doing gender: Sorting out
the caste and crime conundrum. Criminology,
33, 47-94.
46.
SimpsonS.S.HerzD. (1999). Gender, crime, and criminal
justice. InS. ChafetzJ(Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of gender.
New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishing Corporation.
47.
SlocumL.A.MorrisN.(2004, November).
Do time-varying event and offender characteristics affect the
accuracy of Self-Reported Life Event Calendar data?Paper presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of
Criminology, Nashville, TN.
48.
SteffensmeierD.AllanE. (1996). Gender and crime: Toward a
gendered theory of female offending. Annual Review
of Sociology, 22,
459-487.
