Two Words, One Answer.
worst female
 Whores And Thieves of the Worst Kind: A Study of Women, Crime, And Prisons, 1835-2000 $22.50 I read this book on the advice of a friend and was very impressed! It is one of those rare works of history that is both an impressive scholarly work and a very interesting read. As an historian myself who has done some work on the significance of gender to the history of 19th and 20th century insane aslyums, I found that her conclusions concerning the way race and gender assumptions often guide attempts to "reform" wayward women rang true. As an attorney who has both prosecuted mostly men for white collar criminal offenses and defended men and women, as well as immigrants and people of color in criminal court, it was fascinating to see the historical roots of some of the obvious characteristics of our current criminal justice system. Chief among these is the notion that both crime and criminality are socially constructed categories. When people in different social circumstances engage in the same behavior, the underlying motivations for their actions and their social consequences are often construed very differently by prosecutors, judges,juries and parole officers. Mara Dodge demonstrates this in concrete and persuasive ways by telling the stories of women's experience in the Illinois penal system over a broad span of time. The bottom line is that reading the book made these women and their experiences real for me and made me more interested in understanding the way that our society and legal system treats people differently according to their race, gender and social class. 1835 was a long time ago, and yet in many ways it seems that our society has not changed all that much. |
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