'Feminist theorising and research on crime within the family has transformed fundamentally criminological understanding of the problem of crime' Discuss.

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Seminar Leader: Keith Hayward                                        Natalie Norwood

‘Feminist theorising and research on crime within the family has transformed fundamentally criminological understanding of the problem of crime’ Discuss.

The Sage Dictionary of Criminology defines family Crime as a “generic term which draws attention to the extent and range of violence and abuse in ‘private’ domestic life”.  Family crime or domestic violence has been a hidden crime for many decades.

The woman’s movement in the 1970’s  broke the silence on issues which related to the victimisation of women in the private sphere. These issues included childhood abuse, incest, rape and domestic violence. Since that movement, women’s experiences began to be discussed and noted. Feminist criminology started to become a noticeable part of criminology around the early 90’s. Criminologists with the feminist perspective aim to increase female visibility within criminological knowledge. As well as this, they aim to understand crime as a male dominated activity produced not only as a result of sex differences but also as a product of gender differences. They question whether sex/gender have a place in crime, justice and criminological and justice theories. Feminist criminology is made up of many different theories; there is no one feminist criminology and it is believed by many that the term “feminist criminology” should be abandoned.

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To find out what effect feminist criminology on domestic violence has made, it is important to look at various feminist theories that have been developed around this area of crime. As stated before, there is no one feminist criminology; therefore each theory may have had a different contribution to how the problem of crime is now understood.

Radical feminist criminology has described male violence against women as a ‘unitary phenomenon’ (Edwards, 1987). Radical feminists have described violence by men towards women as the “basis of men’s control over women”. To understand domestic violence as a problem of crime, ...

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