Shani D'Cruze and Louise A. Jackson provide students with a lively overview of women's relationship to the criminal justice system in England, exploring key debates in the regulation of 'respectable' and 'deviant' femininities over the last four centuries. Major issues include:

• attitudes towards murder and infanticide * prostitution
• the decline of witchcraft belief * sexual violence
• the 'girl delinquent' * theft and fraud

The volume also examines women's participation in illegal forms of protest and political activism, their experience of penal regimes as well as strategies of resistance, and their involvement in occupations associated with criminal justice itself. Assuming that men and women cannot be studied in isolation, D'Cruze and Jackson make reference to recent studies of masculinity and comment on the ways in which relations between men and women have been understood and negotiated across time.

Featuring examples drawn from a rich range of sources such as court records, autobiographies, literature and film, this is an ideal introduction to an increasingly popular area of study.

The only book on the market to offer a comprehensive introduction to the history of women's relationship to criminality and criminal justice over the period
Explores key areas, and hot topics, such as murder and infanticide, sexual violence, prostitution, fraud, and the 'girl delinquent'

Autorentext

SHANI D'CRUZE is an Honorary Reader in the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice at the University of Keele, UK.

LOUISE A. JACKSON is Senior Lecturer in the School of History at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Inhalt
List of Tables and Figures.- Abbreviations.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction: 'Vice' and 'Virtue'?.- Women and Criminality: Counting and Explaining.- Women and Property Offences.- Women and Violence.- Women and Sexuality.- Women, Social Protest and Political Activism.- Women in Control?.- Women and Punishment.- Girls and Delinquency.- Afterword.- Notes.- Suggested Reading.- Index.