Roundtable: Reconceptualizing Young Women and Violence

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Offending young women and girls have moved from relative obscurity to high visibility as they have become increasingly subject to criminological attention. Yet, despite great advances in the knowledge base, much of the scholarly literature on female offending, and particularly that of young women and girls, remains largely descriptive and atheoretical, and overly preoccupied with those who are violent and/or gang-involved. Drawing on contemporary research conducted in the US, UK and Europe, this roundtable will explore, debate and challenge dominant frames of representing and responding to violent young women. It draws together discussants from different disciplinary perspectives in order to reflect on the ways in which young women who use violence are positioned and responded to in media, criminal justice policy discourse, and practice, and also within academic research accounts of young women and violence. The roundtable aims to provoke participants to engage in creative thinking about the problematic ways in which young women are often positioned within criminological research e.g. as triply deviant,and demonised 'others', and to encourage critical thinking about what (and how) we can learn about young women¹s violence, agency and resilience from young women themselves, and from those who work very closely with them.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Chair

• Michele Burman, University of Glasgow

Discussants

• Robin A. Robinson, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

• Annie Crowley, University of Glasgow

• Judith Ryder, St. John's University