Women offenders who served community sentences: A view from Catalonia

Unlike in other jurisdictions, in Catalonia there has been no specific evaluation of women’s experiences regarding community sentences. The purpose of this article is to contribute to filling this gap by conducting qualitative research in Barcelona and Girona to analyse the experiences of women serving community sentences. To this end, 23 semi-structured interviews with women offenders are analysed. The results follow the trend found in research conducted in other jurisdictions and show that women have multiple issues, responsibilities and needs in comparison with men, and what works with female offenders is different from what works with male offenders with regard to supervision style, relationship with professionals and unpaid work or therapy environments. The findings make it possible to identify alternative responses that offer appropriate support and interventions to address women’s underlying problems and reduce reoffending. The article underscores the importance of listening to women’s voices in order to achieve a gender-sensitive criminal justice system.

Women Offenders as a Social Phenomenon: Transformation and Deformation of Social Roles

The research featured women offenders as a social phenomenon associated with the social role of women. The study was based on the socio-role approach. The authors defined women's crime as an integral part of all crimes committed by women on a certain territory over a certain time period. The statistics of female crime in Russia and its regions came from the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, the Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Kemerovo Region, and the Territorial Authority of the Federal State Statistics Service. The authors also analyzed cases of fraud related to maternity capital funds. Firstly, female crime proved an integral part of crime in general; it has its own specifics and is directly related to the roles that women play in society. Secondly, women commit mostly profit-related crimes, e.g. theft or fraud, while murder proved more typical of men. Thirdly, maternity fund fraud appeared to be a relatively new type of crime. Apparently, its female character is associated with childbearing and maternal function. Swindlers see new opportunities in maternal funds, and a woman in distress can easily become an instrument of their criminal activity.

A Standard Reading of Selected Online Readers’ Comments on Domestic Violence against Men in Nigeria

The study performs a standard reading of online readers’ comments on Domestic Violence against Men (henceforth, DVAM). This is with a view to exploring how the readers’ comments develop dialogically to build up threads that depict salient motifs on DVAM in the Nigerian sociocultural domain. The specific objectives of the study are to identify the dialogic developments of threads among the commenters; construe motifs cum shared socio-cultural values in the identified threadal developments; and elicit the rhetorical implications of the threadal developments on the phenomenon of DVAM in Nigeria. The data comprise two purposively selected online news reports on DVAM with their readers' comments, sourced from the news archives of The News and Sahara Reporters. The study adopts the Dialogic Dual Reading Model as the analytical framework. The standard reading of the threadal developments of the readers’ comments in the two selected news reports reveals that a large number of the commenters maintain the ideological stance that DVAM is unjustifiable; some commenters, however, argue that acts of DVAM are often perpetrated in self-defense. This contrary ideological notion of self-defense not only portrays the women-offenders in these cases as victims but also justifies their acts of violence.

Solving Her Problems? Beyond the Seductive Appeal of Specialist Problem-Solving Courts for Women Offenders in England and Wales

At the nexus of the social and penal policy fields, problem-solving justice promises to punish offenders while working to address the complex issues that drive their law-breaking behaviour. Appealing to the left and right due to its dual focus on pragmatism and welfarism, the concept has floated in and out of political fashion for the past two decades. Recent years have heralded a renewed political interest in the approach, closely aligned to the Conservative government’s commitment to ‘transforming justice’. With a focus on empowerment and collaboration, the problem-solving model has much to offer women offenders in particular. Drawing on data from a large-scale study into the sentencing and punishment of women under the new probation arrangements, this article reveals a divergence of views on gender-specific courts among sentencers, probation officers and third sector workers. Moral concerns about up-tariffing sit alongside the practical barriers of government bureaucracy and hindering legislation. With data pertaining to effectiveness (rather than potential) still required, this article argues that specialist problem-solving courts for women present a risky strategy, however seductive their promise.