The purpose of this research is to examine two different sociological models of deviance theory, and see how they may be applied to the issue of the problem of violence and crime committed by women. The plan of the research will be to set forth elements of the issue of violence and crime committed by women as a deviant form of behavior, focusing on a presentation of data driven evidence on the subject, and then to compare and contrast two different theoretical points of view on the issue. Additionally, these viewpoints will be discussed and evaluated in terms of their ability to explain the phenomenon of deviant criminal behavior by women, with a view toward suggesting possible lines of research development and the formation of social policy that addresses deviant criminal behavior on the part of women.
Criminal behavior by women has been seen as an important social problem almost throughout the modern period. Theories explaining the problem have not been uniform. Among the first theories to explain criminal behavior in women was put forward by Cesare Lombroso, who in the nineteenth century found a positive correlation between antisocial behavior and a born criminal with certain "hereditary physical traits" (Funk & Wagnalls, 1975, p. 151). Lombroso appears to have become interested in deviant females to no good effect, as the following critique suggests:
Cesare Lombroso is credited with starting it all. Trained in
biological sciences, Lombroso was uncomfortable with the
philosophical musings on crime. . . . Troubled by shifting
legal definitions of crime, Lombroso set out to find hard,
unchanging, scientific categories. . . . Lombroso had made
several studies of men before he set out to distinguish what
he called the "born female criminal" from the "normal
woman," the nice, upper middle class Italian lady. Common
sense and Lombroso's own experience to...