Issues In Criminology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Issues In Criminology - Essay Example 295). Intense gender discrimination, like the refusal of numerous law schools to give access to women, the frequent segregation of women from juries, and the habit of imposing to female and male ‘offenders’ different punishments for the same offences went mostly unquestioned (Lanier & Henry, 1998, 279). The scale of the victimisation of girls and women indicated that the lack of attention on the role of violence in the lives of women was the prime issue to appeal to the interest of feminist scholars and advocates. Due to this, a large volume of literature exists on the issue of victimisation of women, particularly in the subject matters of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and domestic violence. Meanwhile, the identification of the breadths and forms of female victimisation had a considerable influence on policy making, and it is perhaps the most concrete contribution of radical feminism to mainstream criminology (Almeder, Koertge & Pinnick, 2003, 18). The influence of cr iminology and especially criminological theory was varied, although, partly because these crimes did not at appear to challenge. The impact on the field of criminology and particularly criminological theory was mixed, however, in part because these offenses did not initially seem to dispute androcentric criminology as such (ibid, p. 18). Rather, the notions of ‘victimology’ and ‘domestic violence’, while crucial in the development of feminist perspective of criminology, also provided mainstream criminologists and several practitioners of criminal justice an alternative way of understanding criminology theory and research (Flavin, 2001). The objective of this essay is to discuss the development of feminist criminology, focusing on the post-war period, especially the 1960s and 1970s. More particularly, the essay will focus on the contribution of the three feminist perspectives, namely, (1) feminist empiricism, (2) standpoint feminism, and (3) feminist postmod ernism to British criminology theory and research. Feminist Perspectives of Criminology Feminist perspectives have remarkably grown in areas that have more established practices of interpretive knowledge like history and literature (Flavin, 2001). On the contrary, the tradition of criminology persists to be profoundly ingrained in the scientific method (ibid, p. 273). A great deal of British mainstream criminology is founded on principles that ‘science is value neural’ (Flavin, 2001, 273). Research can be duplicated, as argued by positivism, since researchers generate knowledge in related ways, making criminologists similar with each other (Almeder et al., 2003, 20). Richard Powers of the New York Times recognised the ‘vesting of authority in experiment’ (Flavin, 2001, 274) as the most outstanding thought of the new century. Yet, Powers (1999) argued that scholars â€Å"from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Thomas Kuhn and beyond† (ibid, p. 81) have mentioned, ... that fact and artefact may be closer than most empiricists are comfortable accepting... That great empiricists have rejected initial data on hunches, until their observations produced more acceptable numbers. That