The criminal behavior of women has a negative impact on the whole society because it affects its basic unit - the family and its moral-psychological atmosphere. The problem is still of great social importance, as the nature of female offenders has significantly changed. Currently, it is observed that the nature of the criminal behavior of women is marked by an increase in the number of committed graves and especially grave crimes, increased recidivism, reducing age (rejuvenation) of criminals and offenders. At the beginning of the XX century and in the first years after the millennia women's crime did not attract special attention: women committed an insignificant amount of crimes, and social activity was low. However, today the situation is different and a significant increase in female offenders can easily be observed (Pasco 107).
Analyzing the statistics of crimes in connection with gender, Pasco (2013) at the same time made a number of fair remarks (Pasko 106) about the criminal anthropological school of Lombroso, who believed a woman to be more criminal than a man. Declaring a woman standing at a lower level of organic development, than a man, Lombroso expected more criminal activity on the part of females (Lombroso 28). Since the criminal statistics testify the contrary, Lombroso believed that in addition to the data regarding female criminality it is necessary to add information about prostitution of women, as he believed the behavior and actions of criminals and prostitutes to be similar (Lombroso 32). The supporters of the sociological school explain the criminality of women in a somewhat different way. They take into account the social situation of the woman, her detachment from political and public life, her “lock-up” within the family life.
It must be said that women have a number of distinctive psychological traits, including those related to their biological characteristics, which cannot but have an influence on their actions. Causes of criminal behavior of women can be determined only if there will be an understanding of the essence of their personality, the inner world, experiences, psychological and biological features (Pasko 107).
Considering women's crime from the standpoint of psychology, many modern researchers note that women are distinguished by characteristic features such as heightened emotionality, impressionability, the lability of the nervous system that have an impact on the formation of criminal motivation. It has a pronounced emotional coloration, and the criminal behavior of women is characterized by explosiveness, aggressiveness, impulsivity (Pasko 109).
Pointing to gender differences, and referring to the medical literature data, a significant number of women who have committed crimes against another person, are inherent features characteristic of psychopathic personalities. Women convicted of assault, slander, and insults, are extremely irritable and have frequent temper tantrums. Even in combination with the negative social impact of psychopathy, this does not always lead to criminal behavior. Antisocial features of the personality, its values, needs, play the crucial role here (Baskin and Sommers 73).
Women are more impulsive and emotional than men. Psychological trauma associated with professional or family conflicts can be a profound and long-term problem gnawing at them. Women often evaluate life situations as threatening to them or their loved ones. Therefore, the illegal actions often are protective in nature and are intended to protect themselves and their family from trouble (Urbina 22).
It is known that female psychology has a characteristic quality such as the desire to draw attention to them. For women critical assessment of other people and what impression they make is of high importance. Many are inherent such characteristic feature as being demonstrative. Demonstratively inherent are criminals, but this is mainly manifested in their aggressive and criminal behavior. This is also the means to promote the function of self-affirmation. The need for self-affirmation is one of the most powerful incentives for human behavior. Affirmation for them is the need for confirmation of their existence, their place in life (Baskin and Sommers 97). The needs and interests of women are largely connected to the social roles that are performed by them in the family, the community, and society. Adverse external factors have different effects on women, depending on whether they have a family. The main mass of female offenders compared to male offenders are less characterized by antisocial , they do not have sustainable criminal convictions (Urbina 29).
It must be said that there are much fewer women compared to men, who at the time of the crime was in a state of extreme intoxication. In any case, it is almost impossible to encounter such women who do not remember or do not remember the circumstances of the crime and their own actions. A female criminal who commits a crime, regardless of its severity and the subsequent consequences, is well aware of what it is and because of what. Studying the psychological characteristics of women who have committed crimes, researchers note that the motivation of violent crime is different from the motivation of the acquisitive crime (Baskin and Sommers 153).
The motive of the violent crime is often the desire to get rid of the victim or the desire to take revenge for his actions. Roughly equal shares fall on such motives as fear and jealousy. Among other motives researcher name hooliganism, jealousy, greed, sadistic, sexual motivation. Women in this category tend to act under the influence of the prevailing at the moment emotion without sufficient understanding of the situation that led them to temper, intemperance behavior, rash decisions, and often aggressive actions towards other convicts (Urbina 34).
Women first convicted of serious violent crimes characterized by such traits as neglect of generally accepted norms, high self-esteem, the selfishness, the desire for self-assertion. This category of convicted women has inherent features of the socio-demographic, criminological and primarily moral and psychological nature. These features are the cause of their crimes. Although there is another category – convicted women, who flaunt the offense and whose behavior emphasizes their negative attitude. Their bravado is often a result of the presence of anti-social attitudes.
Personality characteristics of female offenders contribute to the formation of different motives, which often operate on an unconscious level (Zaplin 147). On the basic psychological characteristics and motives, scholars have determined two leading personality types of women who have committed violent crimes. The first type - defender - is characterized by the fact that one of the most common motives for murder and grievous bodily harm is a defense against a possible, often a non-existent aggression from others. These criminals almost always or very often feel the hostile environment, and their criminal actions have the subjective sense of protection against it. "The motive for the crime serves the protection of their "I", a social and biological “status." The second type - dependent. Its representatives are characterized by low self-esteem, lack of confidence, a strong social and psychological dependence on men (Urbina 36).
The criminal motivation of women who have committed acquisitive crimes has its own characteristics. Women convicted of an acquisitive crime, have antisocial attitudes that are more visible than those of women convicted of violent crimes. They are less impulsive, guilt is completely absent. These women have a higher level of intelligence, distinguished by great stubbornness in their behavior. The most common motives of crimes of women convicted of theft of personal property, theft of state or public property are the desire to live not worse than the lives of their immediate environment, the need to provide themselves and family with everything they require to live in pleasure.
We can say that female crime is the part of the underworld, which is to become younger and more in numbers with every year. The motives of women crimes are different: it may be greed, hatred, anger, resentment, betrayal. Each case is nothing like another (Zaplin 204).
Strengthening of the role of the greed-consumerism as the motivational structure of women's criminality currently contributes to largely dominant model of development, which now results in a selfish society, changing ideas about the purpose of life and how to achieve them. On the one hand, the general background of newspaper and magazine publications forms misconceptions about the material status. On the other - presented as fashionable patterns of behavior in reality are not available for many to follow and therefore cause one part of the population to reject it, and the other the desire to simulate at any cost, even if it involves a violation of the prohibitions.
Greed, consumerism characterizes the motivational structure of any crime, but mainly in female criminality experts have encountered such kind of motive is greed-prestige (Zaplin 208). This motivation is one of the oldest regulators of behavior of women and motives of their activity. At present, the rating gain in prestige, motivational structure of female crime has not fallen.. At the heart of the latest problem is the desire to achieve the necessary level of security and material family benefits. Family 'motivation is especially typical for women who commit misappropriation and embezzlement of entrusted property and kidnapping for the sake of children.
In conclusion, it would have been much more pleasant to see as little of women as convicts as possible. After all, a woman, being by nature an emotional, sensitive and vulnerable, has been enacted the role of wife, mother, continuer of the family traditions and genes by the age-old civilization of humanity. Whereas, any penal institution in our country is a brutal state mechanism with its own rules and laws (Zaplin 118).
Still significant is the share of such motives as greed, alcoholism, and drug addiction. In the hierarchy of needs, the culprit, in this case, is dominated by the need for alcohol and drugs. This is a manifestation of addiction, not excluding, however, the subject of sanity. Female offenders commit crimes for various reasons. Nonetheless, it has been proven that such crimes are always carefully pre-planned and females know what they are coming up against. They also know the consequences that are bound to catch up with them no matter where they would be.
Works Cited
Baskin, Deborah R., and Ira B. Sommers. Casualties of community disorder women's careers in violent crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Print.
Lombroso, C. The Female Offender. Nabu Press. 2010. Print.
Pasko, Lisa. The female offender: girls, women, and crime. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2013. Print.
Urbina, Martin G. A Comprehensive Study of Female Offenders Life Before, During, and After Incarceration. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher, LTD, 2008. Print.
Zaplin, Ruth T. Female offenders: critical perspectives and effective interventions. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen Publishers, 1998. Print.
