Offender in the United States

Children of Female Offenders in relation to Crime and Race

Children of Female Offenders is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Race and sex have long been recognized as significant correlates of crime and criminality in U.S. society. In a similar vein, incarceration rates have served as a yardstick, albeit an imperfect one, for measuring changes in crime and criminality over time. As a result, scholars, criminal justice practitioners, and the media have focused much of their attention on the male offender, particularly the Black man who is grossly overrepresented in the U.S. prison population. Since the early 1980s, attention has turned toward a different group of offenders: women. During the past 2 decades, female incarceration rates have dramatically outpaced those of their male counterparts, thus opening up a new line of research as academicians, practitioners, and theorists alike attempt to explain the unprecedented rise in women’s criminality.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Children of Female Offenders in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also