Debunking the Theory of the Female “Masked Criminal”
| Author | Jocelynne A Scutt |
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587801100106 |
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
AUST
&NZ
JOURNAL
OF
CRIMINOLOGY
(March 1978) 11 (23-42)
DEBUNKING
THE
THEORY
OF
THE
FEMALE
"MASKED CRIMINAL"
J
ocelynne
AScutt0
And it should be
noted
that there was a
defect
in the formation of the first woman,
since she was
formed
from
abent rib, that is, a rib of the breast,
which
is
bent
as it
were in a
contrary
direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an
imperfect
animal, she always deceives
...
Kramer
and
Sprenger
(1468)1
23
Where the criminal is female, theories
of
crime
have
mostly
ignored
her.
Her
apparent
absence, in
any
great
numbers,
from
the criminal
scene
has
been
explained
in terms
of
the middle-class
prototype,
the "ideal",
the
"feminine
woman"-a
parad-igm
of
virtue, a
paragon
of morality: "
...
when
she was good,
she
was very,
very
good
...
"
Her
presence
within the system,
where
the
exception
to the rule of "goodness" occurs, is seen in sexual terms -
the
fallen
woman,
the
woman
of
easy virtue, of innate viciousness, the incorrigible: ". . .
but
when
she
was
bad,
she was
horrid
...
"
POLLAK'S
"MASKED
CRIME"
THEORY
Recently,
however,
even
the seemingly virtuous
woman
has
been
called to
task.
The
low (official)
crime
rate of
women
distorts the
"true"
picture
of crime,
contended
Pollak (1961). Were the
offences
in
which
women
excel - such as
shoplifting,
domestic
theft, criminal
abortion
- to
be
represented
within
the
system
at their
"true"
level,
the
statistics
of
women
criminals
would
rise
dramatically,
rapidly
approximating
male
criminal figures. Pollak
estimated
that
within the
New
York
City
jurisdiction as an example,
were
shoplifters
and
abortionists
prosecuted
in degrees akin to
the
rate
of their activities, this
would
alter
the
male-female
crime
ratio
from
10:1 to 4.7:1.
Pollak also
concentrated
on
the
"unreportable"
crime,
where
he
believed
women
to play a
large
role, his
contention
being
that
were
thefts by prostitutes
or blackmail arising
from
illicit sexual relationships
prosecuted,
or instances
where
women
"con"
men
into giving
up
money
or goods, to
come
to the
attention of authorities, female criminal statistics
would
be
more
realistic.
Additionally, if
women
were
to
be
treated
on ian
equal
basis
with
men
by law
enforcement
agencies,
not
escaping
prosecution
and
punishment
simply
because
they
are
women
and
therefore
treated
"chivalrously" by
being
let off, using their
oLLB (WA), LLM (Syd), LLM (Mich). Dip Juris (Syd). Senior
Law
Reform
()fficer,
Australian
Law
Reform
Commission.
24
JOCEL
YNNE A
SCUTT
ANZJ Crim (1978) 11
smiles
and
femaleness manipulatively,
the
true
picture
of
female criminality
would
emerge.
Undoubtedly
there
is a vast
area
of
"masked
crime"
escaping
attention of
police, courts
and
other
enforcement
agencies. It is true that
where
official crime
statistics are studied,
where
the
people
recorded
officially as "crimina}" are the
subject, avast
area
of
criminality
and
a vast
number
of criminals remain
untouched. But it is questionable
whether
it is only the
woman
who
profits in this
way
- or
that
it is the
woman
who
profits
more
often. Men certainly profit frorn
the
inability of
the
criminal justice
system
to deal with
every
transgressor -
and
it is arguable that in
some
instances at least
men
may
profit
even
more
than do
women.
UNDISOOVERED
CRIME
(i) White Collar
Crime
One
area
of
crime
which is notoriously elusive is that of the white collar
offender.
The
fallacy of considering
crime
solely from the
view
point of the blue
collar is evident: a
bank
robber
is obvious, an
embezzler
less visible,
but
none
the
less
both
are
criminals
and
should
be dealt with
by
law. 2White collar
criminals are,
however,
more
likely to escape
detection
or to
escape
criminalisation
by
authorities,
due
to the intrinsic
nature
of the crimes
committed,
to the status of the violator, to special conditions such as allowance
for
restitution, ability to
pay
"hush money"
...
and
here, if all white collar
criminals figure in official estimates of crime, surely it
would
be
male statistics
rather
than female statistics that
would
receive the greatest boost.
Although
women
conceivably
commit
white
collar crimes which go
undetected,
more
males,
because
of
the
economic
and
social structure of our
society
-
placing
men
in positions of
greater
opportunity
for the commission of
embezzlement,
company
fraud, trust violations
and
the like - will
commit
such
crimes
...
subsequently
escaping
detection
or prosecution."
(ii) Criminal Abortion
What of the suggestion that criminal
abortion
is alarge area of
undetected
female
criminal activity? Although it is recognised that a
great
number
of
women
act as illegal abortionists, it is also true that criminal abortions are very
often
carried
out
by qualified doctors."
There
may
be
many
female doctors
implicated
in this area,
but
it is valid to
suppose
that
more
males must
necessarily be
implicated
in this
particular
aspect of
abortion
as a crime, as
more
males than females are doctors. In 1960, for example,
women
physicians
made
up 9.:N of all physicians in
the
United
Kingdom," In the
United
States in the
same
year there
were
15,513 female physicians
and
surgeons as
compared
with
213,413 male physicians
and
surgeons -
the
women
making
up
6.5~
of all
physicians in
the
United
States
throughout
the
1960s decade." Similarly in
Canada,
Norway,
the Netherlands,
France,
Australia
and
Brazil,
Epstein
(1970)
has cited figures showing female phsyicians
making
up
between
7'1J
and
12~
of all
physicians in those respective countries. Thus clearly males
have
a
greater
opportunity
for acting illegally in
committing
abortions within the
medical
profession.
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