Female Criminality in India
Female Criminality in India
Recently, the Bangalore police nabbed a 40-year old serial killer. A chain snatching gang was caught by Delhi Police. And there is one startling theory coming forward-both had women as criminal and that they were performing acts that were hitherto relatively unheard as done by women in India before – serial-killing and robbery. Crime, in India, is not a male bastion anymore.
However, when it comes to crime, until the last twenty years, the lack of literature on female criminality is often astounding. One reason given for lack of interest is that females have traditionally been seen as law-abiding. It is certainly true in the context of what the statistics speak but sex crime ration differ depending on what act is being considered as crime. The different involvement in crime of men and women is one of the most striking and criminological truth, and it is therefore surprising that it has to be more widely studied in order to ascertain are its causes.
The history of mankind reveals that the woman has been the foundation stone of a family in particular and society in general. Since the dawn of civilization, women have been seen as preservers of social norms, traditions, customs, morality and family cohesiveness. Woman has been given a position of pride in every religion. My immediate concern is why the woman, who is considered to be foundation stone of family and every spiritual faith, without whose blessings the work of infusing new life into humanity cannot be accomplished, has gone astray making her mark on the crime scene and this is what has encouraged me to write this paper of women’s involvement in criminality in the social, cultural, economic and political milieu of India.
The gravity of the challenge increases manifold when we go through the latest available data on crime from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). While women criminals are still a minority- they comprise only 5% of the criminals convicted for heinous crimes. The Crime in India Reports reveal that the number of females arrested for criminals activities in 2003 were 1,51,675, and this shot upto 1,54,635 in 2007. Also, interestingly, the nature of crimes committed by them too, is gradually witnessing a sea change- from softer crimes like drug trafficking and prostitution to heinous crimes like murder. 3439 women were arrested for murder in 2005 and 3812 in 2007 that is an increase from 5.4% in 2005 to 6% in 2007 (NCRB figures). Also most of the crimes committed by females are ones in the age group 30-45 years.
FEMALE CRIMINALITY: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
The early researchers attributed female criminality to biological or sociological antecedents.Although crime, as a behavioural or social problem, is complicated and not easily understood, the criminality of women is seen more complicated, less understood and subject to easy control. Women are considered as turning crime as a perversion of feminine role whether their causes are biological, psychological, social or environmental.
Innate Criminals/ Biological Viewpoint
Ceasar Lombroso’s contribution is considered as the beginning of scientific study on female crime. He viewed, “female deviance as rooted in the biological make up or as inherent feature of the female species”. He observed female criminals to be more terrible than the male criminals because her cruelty was much more ‘refined’ and diabolic. Lombroso thought women shared many traits with children and they were morally deficient and their lack of intelligence was the reason of their relatively small participation in crime
In nineteenth century, Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) wrote a book called, “The Female Offender”. Their theories were based on atavism; a belief that all individuals displaying anti-social behavior were biological throwbacks. The born female criminal was considered to have the criminal qualities of men and the worst qualities of women.
Otta Pollak explained the influence of hormonal changes over menstruation, pregnancy and menopausal stage. He said that in the pregnancy and menopausal phase, the psychological characteristics such as emotional changes of moods, abnormal craving and impulses and temporary impairment of consciousness point in the direction of criminal causation.
But, in the present age of information technology and impersonal relations at the threshold of the 21st century, such theories seem to be unreasonable and unscientific. All these theories depict crime as an inherent human trait which does not amply describe the phenomenal variations in the nature of crime being committed these days, when crime has risen upto the status of career for many, involving highly