Scholarship in criminology over the last few decades has often left little room for research and theory on how female offenders are perceived and handled in the criminal justice system. In truth, one out of every four juveniles arrested is female and the population of women in prison has tripled in the past decade. Co-authored by Meda Chesney-Lind, one of the pioneers in the development of the feminist theoretical perspective in criminology, the subject matter of The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime, Third Edition redresses the balance by providing critical insight into these issues.

In an engaging style, authors Meda Chesney-Lind and Lisa Pasko explore gender and cultural factors in women's lives that often precede criminal behaviour and address the question of whether female offenders are more violent today than in the past. The authors provide a revealing look at how public discomfort with the idea of women as criminals significantly impacts the treatment received by this offender population.

Meda Chesney-Lind is Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Hawaii, and a B.A. Summa Cum Laude from Whitman College. She has served as Vice President of the American Society of Criminology and president of the Western Society of Criminology. Nationally recognized for her work on women and crime, her books include Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice, The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime, Female Gangs in America, Invisible Punishment, Girls, Women and Crime, and Beyond Bad Girls: Gender Violence and Hype. She has just finished an edited collection on trends in girls' violence, entitled Fighting for Girls: Critical Perspectives on Gender and Violence, published by SUNY Press. Dr. Chesney-Lind is a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and the Western Society of Criminology. She has been on the Women's Studies faculty at the University of Hawaii since 1986, and also serves on the graduate faculty in the Department of Sociology.

She received the Bruce Smith, Sr. Award "for outstanding contributions to Criminal Justice" from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in April, 2001. She was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 1996 and has also received the Herbert Block Award for service to the society and the profession from the American Society of Criminology. She has also received the Donald Cressey Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for "outstanding contributions to the field of criminology," the Founders award of the Western Society of Criminology for "significant improvement of the quality of justice," and the University of Hawaii Board of Regent's Medal for "Excellence in Research."

Chesney-Lind is an outspoken advocate for girls and women, particularly those who find their way into the criminal justice system. Her work on the problem of sexism in the treatment of girls in the juvenile justice system was partially responsible for the recent national attention devoted to services to girls in that system. More recently, she has worked hard to call attention to the soaring rate of women's imprisonment and the need to vigorously seek alternatives to women's incarceration.

In Hawaii, Chesney-Lind has served as Principal Investigator of a long standing project on Hawaii's youth gang problem funded by the State of Hawaii Office of Youth Services. She has more recently also received funding to conduct research on the unique problems of girl's at risk of becoming delinquent from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Finally, she has also recently been tapped by the Hawaii Department of Public Safety to serve on an advisory panel on the problems of women in prison in Hawaii.

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Girls' Troubles and "Female Delinquency"

3. Girls, Gangs, and Violence

4. The Juvenile Justice System and Girls

5. Trends in Women's Crime

6. Sentencing Women to Prison: Equality Without Justice

7. Female Offenders, Community Supervision, and Evidence-Based Practices

8. Conclusion

References

Index

About the Authors