Publication of the week: Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt

1 February 2016

S.K. Mukherjee & J.A. Scutt (eds), Women and Crime (Routledge Library Editions: Women and Crime 2, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 208 pp. ISBN: 978-1-138-18655-2.

This book was first published in 1981 by the Australian Institute of Criminology, and was a major contribution to its field, as the late 1970s and early 1980s were a time of burgeoning scholarship on women as criminals, women as victims / survivors, and the discriminatory impact of criminal law on women as accused. Nine essays survey aspects of the relationship between women and the criminal justice system. The contributors include historians, criminologists, lawyers, ex-prisoners and political scientists. They address issues of women and crime, including questions of women as bad or mad, women and criminal law, women and rising crime, women as victims / survivors, current (at the time) statistics on women and crime. Dr Scutt’s own chapter, “Sexism in criminal law”, argues that criminal laws were “drafted to perpetuate the dependency of women”, while women as victims of crime had responsibility attributed to them which was denied in other spheres. She highlights areas of sexual double standard in the law, such as marital coercion, prostitution and infanticide.

Read more on the Routledge website.

Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt is a Visiting Professor and Senior Teaching Fellow in the Law School at Buckingham. She holds law, arts and film degrees from universities in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, including doctorates from the US and Australia. Her books include amongst others The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics (2 vols, Melbourne: Artemis, 2007); The Sexual Gerrymander: Women and the Economics of Power (North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1994); Even in the Best of Homes: Violence in the Family (Ringwood: Penguin, 1983) and Women and the Law (Sydney: Thomson Regulatory, 1990). Her short documentary films include (with Karen Buczynski-Lee) “A Greenshell Necklace” and “The Incredible Woman”, and a DVD installation, “Covered”, on the cultural and religious issues revolving around the wearing of the scarf.