Venkataramani 1

Vignesh Venkataramani
Prof. R. E. Fulton
UWTR.150.34 - FWR: Writing Seminar
28th September 2016

Do women kill today?

In this text Ann Jones is most focused on the gender bias of
criminality. She gives examples to support this claim. Her project
would be to analyze the gender bias in society towards criminals
and she confirms such a bias among lawmakers from at least a
century back. Though she draws very interesting arguments form
the criminologists of the past. I feel she does not have a strong
basis. Her representation of the problem and her thoughts are based
on the past it has no standing in todays society.
Ann Jones in historical order refers to Cesare Lombroso, the
father of modern criminality. Equipped with his medieval ideas, he
says women do not become criminals but are born criminals. He
approximates such women to men. He seemingly proves his point by
showing the photo of such a girl and thinks they can be identified at
a young age. Ann moves on to Pollaks work. Pollak says women
commit more crimes than we care to admit or notice. He says they
commit as many if not more crimes than men but only they are so
trivial that they go unnoticed. He creates this idea of masked crime
where a crime of small magnitude is hidden in a larger crime or
behind a more obvious larger action. Towards the late 18 th century
Freda Adler becomes an influential figure. Adler uses statistics to
show the increasing crime wave among women and how the growth
in women criminals is much greater than that of men. She says that
committing so many crimes and at an increasing rate is detrimental
for women in general as it is equal to losing the sexual identity and
says it makes them more masculine.
Ann after presenting the above arguments, makes her own.
She says that in actuality the sentences received by women
offenders is more than their male counterparts. Female criminals
tend to be first time offenders and dont get sentenced while repeat

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offenders tend to get heavier sentences than men. She says some
feminist critics go to the extent of calling the criminology system
retarded. Ann asks some tough questions where there is clear
distinguishing between men and women.
The reason there is so much confusion is because there is a
conflict between ancient and modern criminology. The laws and
rules that society accepted in the old days will no longer apply
today. There are still people arguing for the laws which are outdated.
A simple analysis will show that there are many more complex
situation and social norms in the present day and age, that we
simply cannot draw from some ancestral ideology. The political and
socioeconomic standing of women in society has changed vastly
from what it was when the arguments made were relevant. Society
has assigned women many different roles as we progress, from
housewives, teachers and today, any job imaginable. It is only fitting
that the dynamics of criminology of women has also changed
throughout the ages. A very apt way to put it would be although
history may rhyme with itself it will never repeat itself, so there is no
point in looking back and trying to solve problems today with
reference to the historical similarity.
Anns line of questioning and comparison of man and women
though seems sound and logical is actually not very coherent with
todays ideologies of gender equality and women rights. Her
introduction is very frustrating to read as it seems to offer very little
original thoughts and is mostly considering a case. The problem
here is that no matter how many cases one takes into account we
still cannot account for every individual case. Secondly we cannot
use case studies and apply the conclusion for the general case. The
similarity between the people Ann has chosen to review is that all of
them use their knowledge or their preconceived notion of what
women are and how they should behave. This knowledge may be
valid for their day and age but it seems absurd when we apply their
thoughts to todays problems.
The introduction revolves around a very complex dynamic
argument in the sense, the societal view on the idea is ever
changing. Ann is influenced by some very statistics and opinion but

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they may not be entirely true. It is hard to capture the essence of

such a problem. Ann Jones has tried to represent the problem in its
entirety and has succeeded for the most part. The most frustrating
part of the Introduction is that there is very little original opinion and
that she just throws a bunch of statistics and quotes others while
there is less original content representing her original opinion in the
matter.

Works Cited
Jones, Ann. Women who kill. New York: The Feminist Press , 2009. Print .