Introduction to the 30th Anniversary of Women & Criminal Justice

Since the journal’s inception 30 years ago, Women & Criminal Justice has been a groundbreaking forum for the analysis of criminal law, policy and programs that impact women as offenders, victims and practitioners in the field of criminal justice. It should be no surprise to our authors and readers that most research on crime and justice has either simplified gender issues or ignored it. In the 20th century, feminist scholars may have had difficulty publishing their research in journals, which emphasized quantitative criminology if their research on women and girls was qualitative in design. This journal began as a place for a myriad of scholarship that addressed gender as a core construct for responding to crime and victimization. Analyzing women’s stories is not just about the numbers, but also about the context within which women navigate the world around them. The journal aims to be inclusive in terms of methodology and at the cutting edge of contemporary issues that impact the field.

While many studies on women and crime focus on Western nations (see Feeley & Aviram, 2010), an emerging area of research is on whether or not these research findings are consistent with findings in other nations. We have to acknowledge that western responses to crime and victimization may or may not be relevant to communities in Asia and Africa. Feeley and Aviram (2010: 165) call for more studies that are “outside the Northern European context.” Women & Criminal Justice, particularly under my editorship for the past decade, has aimed to include papers that analyze new or enduring problems which impact local and global communities. Some evidence for an enhanced agenda in publishing a broad array of research on women and crime is shown by the journal’s special issues.

The first special issue under my editorship concerned human sex trafficking in 2010. That issue continues to have articles highly downloaded and cited. Despite the United States passing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, the field of criminal justice was just coming to terms with modern-day slavery in 2010. Consequently, the issue provided a specialized forum for publishing quantitative and qualitative research on sex trafficking offending and victimization. Today, a wide range of research is performed on sex trafficking law reform, global human trafficking networks, and research on how to identify victims and implement policy changes to assist victims. Women & Criminal Justice continues to publish research addressing the enslavement of people in the hope that information about victimization, trafficking networks and effective responses can be effectively disseminated.

Domestic violence continues to be an important area of study in criminal justice. While domestic violence might engender dating violence, Angela R. Gover special edited an issue particularly exploring gender and dating violence in 2013. The issue analyzed the correlations among gender, risk factors and dating violence among teen and college-aged persons. Both male and female victims of dating violence were addressed in the issue as well as how prevention efforts need to start with the recognition of risk factors. The issue’s papers showed that violence within a family or dating relationship is gendered and can have long-lasting negative consequences. Abating dating violence continues to be an important area for empirical study.

Alison S. Burke and Mary Dodge oversaw a special issue on punishment and mental health in 2014. This issue challenged us to examine the criminal justice system’s view of women offenders’ deviance in new ways when women have a mental illness. It is sometimes difficult to cast off the stereotypes about who women offenders are and to analyze female offending pathways which considers the cause of violent behaviors and the need to treat trauma. Burke and Dodge (2014: 173) state that in the 20th century “[t]he criminal justice system adopted the need to differentiate between “mad” and “bad” and relied heavily on psychiatric diagnosis along with moral responsibility” to label female offenders. Understanding how to treat mentally ill persons is of continuing concern because sometimes these systems are at odds with one another and toss mentally ill persons from one system to the other and back again. A successful diagnosis continues to place the mental health and criminal justice systems in precarious positions on how to treat or respond to mentally persons who commit crimes or are victims of crime.

Together with Chamois S. Holschuh, I oversaw a special issue framed around the “War on Women” in 2015. The issue provided a multiple-layered platform to address the variety of ways in which females were doing better and/or worse by criminal justice policy and practice reforms. The issue raised important questions about gendered practices, both formal and informal, and how these practices helped or hindered women as professionals, victims and offenders. Laws and policies that seek to control women and diminish the contributions that women make are not new to the 21st century. The legal, social and cultural challenges that need to be overcome to ensure human rights of all people are explored in Women & Criminal Justice.

In 2017, Meda Chesney-Lind oversaw and edited a special issue on policing women’s bodies. She commented (2017: 1) “As we consider the election of Donald Trump as President Elect of the United States, there is perhaps no better time to reflect on the role of the state, and particularly the criminal system, in the policing of girls and women’s bodies.” Indeed, in the past three years, states have increased barriers to women seeking abortions and birth control, increased regulation of women’s health care clinics, continued to regulate girls’ sexuality, and increased regulations regarding transgender persons’ human rights. Such methods of control are not unique to the United States but became a focal point for social action since President Trump took office.

In 2018, I organized with Dylan Pelletier an issue for women working in the criminal justice field entitled “Time’s Up.” The Times Up movement has been instrumental in addressing sexual harassment, sexual assault and sexual discrimination in various fields of employment. The special issue analyzed women in academia and women in policing and how sexual harassment or discrimination can be normalized.

Last year, in 2019, Cyndi Banks oversaw a special issue on gender and terrorism. The double issue explored issues of offending, victimization and criminal justice response to terrorism in diverse regions of the world. The papers explore the role of women as terrorists, the impact of terrorism on women, and how responses to terrorism require attention to the needs of women. Women can be suicide attackers but might be overlooked for having an active role to play in terrorism. Too, women can bear the scars of terrorism when they live in areas impacted by war and are trying to provide for the necessities of life for their children. Terrorism is something that must be considered from a gender perspective. The United Nations (n.d.) stated:

“Including a gender perspective in countering terrorism and violent extremism requires focus on (i) women and girls as victims of terrorism, (ii) women as perpetrators, facilitators, and supporters of terrorism, (iii) women as agents in preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism, and (iv) the differential impact of counter-terrorism strategies on women and women’s rights. It is also important to highlight that a gender perspective not only includes the role of women but also men and masculinities.”

Banks’ issue is a strong start in this direction; it provides both a gender perspective and much needed contemporary research on terrorism.

The journal’s special issues all had either one or more papers that analyzed the criminal justice issue from an international perspective or a paper that analyzed a previously ignored group (e.g., disabled women in the dating violence issue). As noted previously, Women & Criminal Justice aims to provide not just a western perspective to the study of crime and justice but a “global” perspective. Global analysis is not merely denoted by having an international paper or author. A global perspective can be distilled by an examination of what is happening in areas outside the United States, by varying theoretical perspectives on women and crime, by including applied and empirical research, and by continuing to explore emerging areas of concern for understanding gender. As we enter this 30th year of the journal, Women & Criminal Justice continues to explore gender in an innovative manner. This first issue in Volume 30 has three articles which are published in two languages. Each paper is in English and then translated into Czech, Greek or Spanish. It is hoped that these dual-language papers will inspire our readers to consider how language affects our understanding of gender, crime and criminal justice. Bloom (1981), in working with the Chinese people, realized that language can shape our view of the world and it can be gendered. It is a mistake to think that a translation can capture the essence of the author’s intended meaning. Consequently, these dual-language papers will provide the authors with an opportunity to express their research as it is intended to be read and interpreted in the nation studied.

This 30th volume of Women & Criminal Justice will continue to have international scholars contributing papers analyzing gender and criminal justice outside the United States. It will also include a special issue edited by Michelle Hughes-Miller on Regulating Mothering and Reproduction. Feminist scholarship is not just about using feminist theory to analyze a phenomenon, it is about exploring the gendered realities of people from a micro-level or a macro-level of analysis. We have published papers addressing gender identity and plan on a future special issue which focuses on the LGBTQI + community. Transforming society requires attention to culture, law, social organization, political power, gender, race/ethnicity, age, social status and more. It is the intersection of gender with the criminal justice system that bridges the articles published in this journal. We could not continue to grow as a field without the scholarly contributions of the authors of the works published in this journal.

As an editor, I am very privileged to work with the members of our editorial board who support the journal and help to provide me with feedback and guidance. These national and international scholars are leaders in the field of criminal justice and filled with continued enthusiasm for the study of gender and justice. With some sadness, I report the loss of one valued member of our editorial board last year, Helen Eigenberg. We have also had some members retire from the board over the past few years and I will always be appreciative of their contributions to the journal. I have also been extremely honored to work alongside attentive Taylor & Francis editorial managers and production staff members Taylor & Francis and Routledge have been very generous with their time and resources. The journal’s publication looks and reads so well because of their skills, attention and hard work. I wish to personally thank everyone who makes this journal a pleasure to be the editor. Scholarship is not just about getting a “publication,” it about endeavoring to find answers to pressing questions that move humanity forward. Women & Criminal Justice will continue to be at the forefront of scholarship on gender, crime and, justice.