Book Review: Women, Crime and Criminal Justice
| Published date | 01 December 1989 |
| Date | 01 December 1989 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588902200411 |
| Author | Satyanshu K Mukherjee |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
283
It
is
my
expectation that the methods employed
...
will be derived from the traditional approaches
taken
by
the school in its attempt to control disruptive behaviours. The theories
will
assume
fundamentally individualistic causes for problem behaviour. ...(p 195)
Polk stresses
that
in the end prevention
is
only possible through responses to the
structural problems (eg, the creation
of
employment).
In an interesting
paper
Bollert and
Otto
examine European social work failure
to successfully implement preventative strategies. They argue
that
whilst the
structural causes
of
delinquency are well documented, social work has been unable
to integrate structurally-oriented prevention into their direct practice. (That is,
there
is
acontradiction between social work's knowledge and practice.)
The concluding section primarily concentrates
on
the consequences
of
West
German privacy laws for criminological research. This provides scope for discussion
of
issues of informed consent and control
of
research by the state.
The final chapter by Thomas Mathieson provides achilling tale and analysis
of
the police and the state's reaction to astudy of police violence. Mathieson
is
concerned with the prevention
of
state crimes. He cautions against astrategy
of
legalisation for it transforms political conflict into legal issues which are managed
and controlled by the state.
The strength
of
this book
is
that it provides an opening into the justice issues in
the West
German
context. Unfortunately, the discussion
is
on
the whole cast in
familiar and narrow terms. Perhaps the major lesson for Australian readers in this
collection
is
that
we
canno~
look offshore for quick and easy solutions to the
dilemmas of juvenile justice.'
Our
policy and practice responses can
be
informed by
careful analysis
of
our
own and overseas experiences. In the
end
we must develop
and work through responses sensitive to local contextual needs.
Brisbane
IAN
O'CONNOR
Women, Crime
and
Criminal Justice, Allison Morris, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
(1987) 270pp, $27.95.
It has become almost aconvention that abook
on
women and crime must begin with
the following:
Criminology textbooks contain nothing on women.
Criminology, like most disciplines, has been concerned with men.
Criminology theories have ignored women, some are based
on
class
inequalities but do not see the structural inequalities.
Women have been misrepresented. Feminist criminology has either not been
explained properly
or
has been confused.
There exists agender bias in criminal justice.
Since the early 1970s, almost all journal articles and books on women and crime
have pointed
out
these anomalies.
At
times the first chapters
of
books are
id~ntical
in theme.
The
fact
is
that there has been nothing less than aphenomenal growth in
the literature on gender differences since the early 1970s. It
is
time
that
writers
on
women and crime engage in some original thinking and also look beyond
criminology, for criminological theories, in most cases, are offshoots
of
sociological
theories. Actually, the narrow focus ofwriters on women and crime
is
in some ways
h~rting
the growth
of
the field. Last year proposals for anew journal
"Women,
and
Cr~minal
Justice" were circulated. It was proposed that the journal would be a
qu~rterly
and the first issue would appear in the Fall (Northern) 1989. Imet the
ed~tor
in Washington
DC
in March this year and was told that the journal would
appear only twice ayear, the reason being
"not
much interest".
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