Feminist Perspectives On Criminal Law

by Bibbings; Lois S.

• ISBN13: 9781859415269
• ISBN10: 1859415261
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-11-08
• Publisher: Cavendish Pub Ltd

Summary

Criminal law has traditionally been taught and analysed as if the gender of criminals and their victims is irrelevant. It has also been taught and analysed as if criminal law doctrine has no connection with questions of criminalisation,crime detection, decisions to charge and prosecute, lawyers trial tactics, decisions as to guilt and sentencing policy and practice, all of which are significantly affected by gender. This book seeks to fill these gaps by looking at the major areas in which gender affects the way that suspected criminals and their victims are treated by the criminal justice system. However, this book is not just a supplement to traditional criminal law discourse. It is a dangerous supplement, in that the focus on gender challenges laws claim to neutrality and even-handed justice. The essays in this book establish that, not only does the law frequently fail to offer women the sort of protection from male violence and sexual invasion that they need, but it continues to discriminate on grounds of gender. Even when discriminating in favour of women, it does so in ways that reinforce dangerous gender stereotypes. More specifically, both criminal law doctrine and criminal justice personnel apply and reinforce ideas, on the one hand, of female passivity, irrationality and proneness to illness, and, on the other, of natural male aggression - both physical and sexual.

Table of Contents

Foreword	v
Helena Kennedy
Series Editors' Preface	xi
Contributors	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Table of Cases	xix
Table of Legislation	xxv
Table of Abbreviations	xxix
Criminal Law and Feminism	1	(28)
Donald Nicolson
PART I GENDER, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
The Same Old Story: Examining Women's Involvement in the Initial Stages of The Criminal Justice System	29	(20)
Caroline Keenan
Feminist Perspectives on Theories of Punishment	49	(22)
Marie Fox
Against the Politics of Sex Discrimination: For the Politics of Difference and a Women-Wise Approach to Sentencing	71	(16)
Pat Carlen
PART II GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CRIMINAL LIABILITY
General Principles of Criminal Law? A Feminist View	87	(14)
Nicola Lacey
Re-Reading Criminal Law: Gendering the Mental Element	101	(22)
Matthew Rollinson
Groups, Girls and Fears	123	(14)
Celia Wells
General Defences	137	(22)
Aileen McColgan
What the Law Giveth, it also Taketh Away: Female-Specific Defences to Criminal Liability	159	(24)
Donald Nicolson
PART III SPECIFIC OFFENCES
Rape and Criminal Justice at the Millennium	183	(22)
Jennifer Temkin
Commercial Sex and Criminal Law	205	(26)
Mary Childs
Boys Will be Boys: Masculinity and Offences Against the Person	231	(22)
Lois Bibbings
Bibliography	253	(24)
Index	277