Some criminologists, with admirable scientific scepticism, even deny the validity of the statistics. While the criminologists’ theories can be pretty clearly divided into those which espouse biological explanations and those emphasising differences in socialisation and opportunity, both camps are equally inclined either to pathologise or to infantilise women offenders.
Successive generations of criminologists (I need hardly say, most of them male) have struggled to come to terms with what is still the single most striking feature of criminal statistics: the very small number of women, compared with men, who commit crimes. It evokes complicated reactions: anger at injustice compounded by paternalistic hypocrisy despair at the tenacity of stereotypes, however false or contradictory incredulity and even hilarity at the sheer ludicrousness of some of the ideas peddled in the name of science. Anyone with moderately feminist sympathies and a political turn of mind is likely to find reflecting on the history of ideas about women and crime an unsettling experience.
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