NCJ Number
192579
Editor(s)
Roslyn Muraskin
Date Published
2000
Length
503 pages
Annotation
The chapters of this book contain papers by various authors that focus on issues of women in the criminal justice system, with attention to how current female criminality is related to historical stereotypes and gender discrimination related to women's economic marginalization.
Abstract
Section 1 contains three chapters that pertain to the historical development of women's issues. The opening chapter traces the history of litigation and its connection to patriarchal control, followed by a chapter that analyzes the witch hunts in Puritan Salem Village in 1692. The third chapter in this section describes how the slavery system legitimatized and facilitated the sexual exploitation of Black women. Section 2 is composed of four chapters on women as criminal justice system employees, with attention to women on the bench, affirmative action for women in the criminal justice professions, postpartum syndromes and the disparate treatment of women in the legal system, and sexual harassment in the legal system. The four chapters of Section 3 address women in the criminal justice system who have AIDS or are drug dependent. Section 4 is on women in prison and has seven chapters that focus on various aspects of gender-related prison policies and conditions. Section 5 is on women as victims of violence and contains four chapters that focus on the criminal justice policies toward women victimized by domestic assaults, stalking, and forced sexual intercourse. Section 6 of this book contains chapters on abortion and women's right to privacy. Section 7 is on the past, present, and future of women in policing. Section 8 focuses on women in organized crime and as serial killers. Section 9 contains the chapters on the effects of gender in juvenile delinquency. Section 10 drawing conclusions, the final chapter notes that women have had to struggle to be considered persons under the law and to be afforded the same opportunities as men before the law, and the struggle is not yet over. Chapter references and appended biographies of contributors