Historically, women have been an afterthought in criminal justice
policymaking and the criminological enterprise. The study of criminology
has largely been the study of criminal men, because women commit less
crime than men. More recently, criminologists have paid increased
attention to the population of female offenders, partly because of their
growing numbers and partly because of the tens of thousands of children
affected by having their mothers in prison or on supervised release.
The recent attention, however, has not necessarily been a good thing for
women, who are much more likely to be formally prosecuted and
incarcerated today than in decades past. This policy shift has come
about partly because of misinformed policies implemented to “help”
women, and partly because of shifts in theorists’ beliefs and public
perceptions that women and men are similar in their criminal motivations
and should, therefore, be treated similarly. The controversy
surrounding this perception is the focus of this book. To better
comprehend the challenges facing women in the criminal justice system,
the author (a winner of the Bruce Smith Sr. Award from the Academy of
Criminal Justice Sciences) employs research findings and statistics to:
describe the prevalence and patterns of women’s crimes; review
criminological theories, specifically examining how well they explain
female criminality; understand female juvenile offenders, reviewing
crime rates, theories relating to female delinquency, and
detention-related issues; look inside the women’s prison to better
understand female prisoners and their world; examine classification and
programming issues—particularly the impact of gender-specific
programming; and explore the problems experienced by women upon release
and the related issue of women’s recidivism.

Joycelyn M. Pollock