TY - BOOK AU - Ferraro,Kathleen J. TI - Neither angels nor demons: women, crime, and victimization T2 - The Northeastern series on gender, crime, and law SN - 9781555538606 AV - HV6046 .F43 2006 U1 - 364.3/740973 22 PY - 2006///] CY - Boston, Hanover PB - Northeastern University Press, University Press of New England KW - Female offenders KW - Women KW - Crimes against KW - United States KW - Case studies KW - Abused women KW - Sex discrimination in criminal justice administration KW - Crime Victims KW - Criminelles KW - Femmes KW - Crimes contre KW - États-Unis KW - Études de cas KW - Femmes victimes de violence KW - Discrimination sexuelle dans l'administration de la justice pénale KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE KW - Criminology KW - bisacsh KW - fast KW - Frau KW - Gewalt KW - USA KW - idsbb KW - Verbrechensopfer KW - Strafprozess KW - Electronic books KW - lcgft KW - rvmgf N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-313) and index; Introduction -- Blurred boundaries and the complexities of experience -- Irreconcilable differences : women's encounters with the criminal processing system -- Negotiating surreality -- The social reproduction of women's pain -- Demonic angels? : violence against abusers -- Angelic demons? : crimes of complicity -- Epilogue; Electronic reproduction; [Place of publication not identified]; HathiTrust Digital Library; 2010 N2 - She is a victim of intimate partner violence, a woman who has been harmed. She is a criminal offender, a woman who has harmed others. Superficially, it seems she is two separate women. "Victim" and "offender" are binary categories used within law, social science, and public discourse to describe social experiences with a moral dimension. Such terms draw upon cultural narratives of good and bad people and have influenced scholarship, public policy, and activism. The duality of "good" and "bad" women, separated into mutually exclusive extremes of angels and demons, has helped segregate thinking about, and responses to, each group. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen J. Ferraro exposes the limits of such thinking by exploring the link between victimization and offending from the perspective of the women charged with the crimes. Interviewing forty-five women charged with criminal offenses (more than half of whom killed their abusers; the others participated in a range of violent crimes related to domestic violence), Ferraro uses their stories to illuminate complex interactions with violent partners, their children, and the legal system. She shows that these women are neither stereotypical angels nor demons, but rather human beings whose complicated lives belie the abstract categorizations of researchers, legal advocates, and the criminal justice system. Ferraro begins with a general discussion of blurred boundaries and the complexity of experience, and moves from there to discuss women's interactions with the criminal processing system. In the course of her study, she reexamines, and finds wanting, many standard ways of evaluating women's violent behavior, including "mutual combat," "battered woman syndrome," and "cycle of violence." She argues that a more complex, nuanced understanding of intimate partner violence and how it contributes to women's offending will contribute to public policy less focused on control and accountability of individuals than on developing social conditions that promote everyone's safety and well-being and foster a sense of hope UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1098965 ER -