Gender issues in penal policy and penal theory

Abstract

Too often, studies of women offenders and their treatment in the criminal justice system pay little attention to penal policy and penal theory. With, of course, honourable exceptions (who include the editor and many of the other contributors to this volume), work on female offenders lacks a sense of time and of penological context. From student essays through to polished articles in learned journals, there is little reference in writing on female offenders to changes in penal policy or changes in the relative influence of different penal theories. To some extent this contextual neglect is empirically justified: sentencing, especially the sentencing of female offenders, exhibits ‘deep structures’ that are resistant to nuances of penal policy change and to shifting fashions in penal theory. None­ theless, the 1990s saw a series of important developments in penal policy, some of which incorporate significant conceptual shifts about the goals of punishment, and it is therefore well worth considering the impact of these developments on the penal response to female lawbreakers.

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