Book review: Criminal Women: Gender Matters
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/17488958231197050 |
| Author | Janine Ewen |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2023, Vol. 23(5) 897 –899
© The Author(s) 2023
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Book review
Grace S, O’Neill M, Walker T, King H, Baldwin L, Jobe A, Lynch O, Measham F, O’Brien K
and Seaman V (Eds), Criminal Women: Gender Matters, Policy Press: Bristol, 2022; 978
pp.: 9781529208412, £80.00 (hbk), 9781529208412, £24.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Janine Ewen, University of Aberdeen, UK
DOI:10.1177/17488958231197050
‘Criminal Women: Gender Matters’, by Grace et al. (2022), makes for an uncomfortable
but important read on past and current realities of women within the criminal justice
system (CJS) in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The book swiftly brings the word ‘jus-
tice’ into doubt, given the multiple oppressive harms women experience for failing to
meet society’s ‘expectations’ of womanhood. Many women within the CJS who engage
in crime, often crimes that are of a non-violent nature, report that they have experienced
childhood trauma, addiction, poverty, have lived in care, or are victims of male violence.
Indeed, entry into criminality is often inextricably bound up with traumatic experiences
such as these, resulting in penal punishments that equally have repercussions on the
women’s families and wider society. Concerns that the CJS is unresponsive to the spe-
cific needs of women are long-standing.
The book’s Foreword guides us down memory lane, taking us back to 1984, when Pat
Carlen, feminist scholar on deviance and female criminality, was asked to support women
in writing about their lives and experiences of imprisonment. The subsequent book –
‘Criminal Women: Autobiographical Accounts’ (Carlen et al., 1985) – presents Carlen
and her fellow authors’ personal reflections relating to the women’s trials and tribula-
tions; a process that almost certainly involved considerable pain and required a great deal
of compassion. Grace et al.’s ‘Criminal Women: Gender Matters’ shares the same femi-
nist ethos of solidarity and care in its combination of contemporary research and wom-
en’s own narratives. It provides a platform to express the frustration still experienced by
women impacted by the CJS. The book protests ‘here we still are’ and declares that these
women must be heard.
The women’s stories unfold across seven chapters. The first chapter discusses the
influence of drug use and here Grace draws on a wealth of existing research that demon-
strates the CJS’s failure to develop a gender-sensitive drug policy. The accounts of
women involved in drug use and crime raise questions about their responsibility for such
1197050CRJ0010.1177/17488958231197050Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook review
book-review2023
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