Freud on Female Criminality

Unlike Lombroso, Sigmund Freud believed that female criminality was more of a psychological aberration rather than a biological phenomenon. However, both Lombroso and Freud considered females to be biologically inferior to males. In 1933, during his psychoanalytic research, Freud described female offenders as passive, narcissistic, and masochistic. He insisted that these defective characteristics were caused by a "masculinity complex" or by a perpetual state of mind that he called "penis envy". Freud theorized that this "physical deficiency" made women "morally inferior"and unable to control their impulses. This, in turn, affected areas of a female's brain such as the intellectual sphere.

Surprisingly, Freud did not directly attribute female criminality to superego weakness. The superego holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals. It is our sense of right and wrong and provides the guidelines for making judgements according to Freud. Nevertheless, he maintained that females were "inclined toward crime because of their 'anatomical' deficiency. Freud's ideas have been virtually dismissed in modern day psychology and psychiatry fields.

Many criminologists, psychologists, and other researchers have devised countless hypotheses to explain the actions of female offenders. During my reading this week, I came across a statement that I believe holds true in this context. David E. and Melissa Hickman Barlow, authors of Police in a Multicultural Society, stated that people perceived as a "problem population" are marginalized and ostracized and are viewed as a problem because of their potential to disrupt social order. In this instance, women who commit crime are the "problem population" and researchers marginalize them by referring to them as abnormal or insufficient in one way or another. In their minds, there must be some radical explanation as to why women commit crime. What if female offenders do, in fact, have the same reasons for committing criminal acts as male offenders? Does the criminology field really need to study female criminality and formulate an assortment of theories separate from those of male criminals?

Are Female Criminals the Product of Biological Anomalies?

CESAR LOMBROSO

From 1865 through the late 1890s, some of the most violent industrial conflicts in history took place in the United States according to David E. and Melissa Hickman Barlow, authors of Police in a Multicultural Society. Lower classes struggled with the powerful and affluent as they sought to gain workers’ rights and protect the civil liberties of ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, in Italy, physician and criminologist Cesar Lombroso was developing theories to explain the criminal nature of women. Lombroso believed females were less advanced than males and if crime was the result of primitive traits, female crime would be greater than male crime. In reality, female criminality was and still is much lower than male criminality. Lombroso tried to repair the inconsistencies in his theory by stating that prostitution was the female substitute for crime.

In 1893, Lombroso and co-author Guglielmo Ferrero published La Donna Delinquente (The Female Offender) in Italian and it was translated into English in 1895. This controversial criminological work asserted that white males were the most advanced forms of humans, while non-white females were the most primitive. Lombroso believed that women were less intelligent and therefore, less capable of abstract reasoning because of their small cerebral cortex. This made females more vulnerable to psychological disturbances and sexual anomalies. He also maintained that women were similar to domestic animals in that they have the ability to adapt and survive in any given situation, which makes it easier for them to tolerate male manipulation and control.

Lombroso also explained that criminal women were unnaturally masculine and showed signs of atavism - the idea that criminals are born and are evolutionary "throwbacks" that resemble more primitive humans. The alleged "unnatural" masculinity and signs of atavism included biological abnormalities such as irregular cranium shape, moles, and excessive body hair. Lombroso argued that females' passivity as well as their lack of intelligence and initiative to become criminal prevented them from breaking the law. In the end, he concluded that female criminals were rare and exhibited few signs of "degeneration" because they had "evolved less than men due to the inactive nature of their lives". The field of criminology abandoned Lombroso's theories in the early 20th century.

The History Behind the Study of Female Criminality

In 1895, Italian physician Cesare Lombroso and
Guglielmo Ferrero published a book titled The Female Offender, in which they discussed the theoretical biological and hereditary differences between women who committed crime and women who did not. However, the study of the criminal nature of women would not generate much interest until 1916 when Dr. Jean Weidensall published The Mentality of Criminal Women: A Comparative Study of the Criminal Woman, the Working Girl, and the Efficient Working Woman in a Series of Mental and Physical Tests. In 1912, Dr. Weidensall conducted an extensive experiment that studied the mental, physical, and social history and condition of criminal women in the New York State Reformatory for Women.

In her book, Dr. Weidensall explains that the New York State Reformatory for Women was opened in May of 1901 and was established by legislature to care for women between the ages of sixteen and thirty who were convicted of felonies, misdemeanors, or petty offenses. Women were punished with an indeterminate sentence that carried a maximum penalty of three years. During this study, Dr. Weidensall used mental and physical tests to determine whether each woman could be reformed and become a functional member of society.

Unfortunately, little attention would be paid to the study of female criminality until the late 1960s when the Feminist School of Criminology was created. The Feminist School was developed in reaction to the gender bias and stereotypes produced by traditional criminological perspectives. The concept of cultural relativism states that every society has a different moral code that describes what acts are permitted or not permitted, as explained by author Cyndi Banks. Cultural relativism affects the way we view the world and in the early stages of criminological study, women were not expected to commit crime.

http://www.crimeboss.com/

A Substantial Increase in the U.S. Female Prison Population

According to the Justice Department, the number of women in state and Federal prisons rose from approximately 12,331 to an estimated 43,845, a 256 percent increase between 1980 and 1990. This exponential increase is a cause for serious concern especially when compared to the male prison population, which increased 140 percent during this same time period. Today, there are more than 200,000 women behind bars and the number is steadily rising, as reported by the Justice Department.

The swell of female arrests over the past two decades has caused many researchers and criminologists to construct countless theories to explain it. Some criminologists believe that social and economic pressures are to blame for the surge of female offenders, while others assert that biological abnormalities are the primary contributing factors as to why more women are committing crime. On the other end of the spectrum, some experts argue that more women are being formally charged with offenses than in previous years.

During this series of blogs, I hope to explore and attempt to identify the major implications for female criminality and analyze its impact on our society in the United States (the rise in the number of children in the foster care system, the number of women in prison on drug related charges, how female criminals are portrayed in film, and an array of other topics).

For additional data on prison populations from the U.S. Department of Justice (Bureau of Justice Statistics), click on the following link:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

Introduction

For the past several years, I have had a strong interest in forensic science and criminal investigation. However, two years ago I also developed an interest in trying to come up with tangible explanations for why women commit crime.

There is a vast amount of research that hypothesizes why people, in general, commit crime, but only a small to moderate amount of research has been conducted to explain why women commit crime. Some experts have gone as far as saying that there is no need to identify the primary factors that contribute to female criminality, despite the emotional, psychological, and of course, the biological differences between men and women. I do feel that there is a strong need to study women's criminal behavior because it will help us to improve current procedures in dealing with crime; it will also help us to gain a better understanding of crime itself. In doing so, hopefully we can develop solutions to the various problems that generate female criminality and eventually, implement prevention tools to thwart these problems before they emerge.