Women who offend: Their experiences explored

Abstract

The following piece describes the findings of a Masters project in social work, undertaken in New Zealand, which looked at women's experience of crime and their perceptions of various interventions from the criminal justice system. The views of probation officers were also explored. The experiences of six 'women as criminals' interviewed for the project were invariably based on histories of being victims of physical, psychological and sexual abuse, having substance misuse problems and making bad life choices. However, their stories revealed a group of “rational’ actors capable of desisting from crime, reassessing their lives for the positive factors and beginning to live some of their dreams.