Self-Harm and Suicide

Abstract

The marginalization of ‘criminal women’ is well documented. In contrast to male offenders, the assumed ‘exceptional’ behaviour of women who offend is often interpreted as irrational, unpredictable and a denial of ascribed servile femininity. Frances Heidensohn (1985, p.74) identifies two ‘widely held views about female offenders’. The first centres on assumptions of abnormality and individual pathology. Second, those who commit crimes that carry a prison sentence are considered ‘especially … mentally ill or otherwise highly deviant’, explaining why there are so few women prisoners. The ‘implicit assumption being’ that women prisoners are ‘less reclaimable, more vile, more “unnatural” than male’.