Touring female crime: power and perceptions

ABSTRACT

Popular interest in crime is substantial and longstanding, driving the development of crime-based dark tourism attractions. The appeal of these sites can partly be explained through the understanding of functions of transgression as tours provide their audiences with infotainment. These representations of crime both reflect and shape social and cultural perceptions of the nature of offending and victimization. There is, however, a significant gap in relation to the discussion of these crime-based dark tourism activities with almost no engagement with gender at these sites. To fill this gap, this paper presents a conceptual discussion on tourism to sites of female criminal activity, drawing parallels to similar male crime locations. Examination of online advertising for murder walking tours in the UK reveals gendered power dynamics wherein traditional, western gender roles are enforced through the removal of agency from women who engage in more violent crimes while simultaneously fetishizing women as victims of violence, especially sexual. This is evident in the absence of female serial killers within organized dark tours, which often focus specifically on this sexual violence. Thus, the tourist activities that revolve around dark heritage sites, especially those that deal with violent criminal activity, reinforce gendered stereotypes around ‘acceptable’ transgression.

KEYWORDS:

• Dark tourism
• crime tourism
• serial killer
• gender
• murder
• walking tour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bailey Ashton Adie

Bailey Ashton Adie is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies at Solent University, Southampton, United Kingdom. Her research interests include World Heritage tourism and management, sustainable heritage tourism for community development, second home tourism, tourism and disasters, tourism branding and marketing, film tourism, overtourism, and visitor management. She has published in number of leading journals including: Annals of Tourism Research, Current Issues in Tourism, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Management Perspectives, and the Journal of Heritage Tourism. She is also the author of the Routledge book, World Heritage and Tourism: Marketing and Management.

Esther J. Snell

Esther J. Snell is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Solent University, United Kingdom. Her research explores the construction, dissemination and influence of printed representations of crime and justice. Her publications include ‘Trials in Print: Narratives of Rape Trials in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey’, in D. Lemmings (ed.) Crime, Courtrooms and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1700–1850 (Farnham and Burlington, Ashgate, 2012); and ‘Shame and malice in the eighteenth-century criminal court and community’ in D. Lemming and A.N. May (eds.) Criminal justice during the long eighteenth century: Theatre, representation and emotion (Routledge, 2018).