Essay 11: Demonstrate the nature & extent of the involvement of women in drug-related crimes
by referring to authoritative research
Drug use is the defining factor in female crime. Almost all the profiles of female criminality involve
drug use, and it is associated more with female criminality than with male criminality. Mann
conducted scientific research that focused on a specific drug and its impact on female criminality.
Her demographic data showed that females who use heroin in the USA are mostly young, black,
minority females who are even younger than white female addicts. She found that the female drug
addicts were still older than their male counterparts. She found that female heroin abusers are more
likely to be separated, divorced or widowed than male addicts. They are also significantly more
likely to have children. She stated that female drug addicts had more general disorganisation and
economic insecurity in their early family life than males. They also suffered from incestuous assaults
and sexual abuse by their fathers or other male relatives. Mann did not make a link, but many
researchers ask the question if there is a link between self-medicating and sexual abuse.
Rosenbaum did a phenomenological study, which has a qualitative approach, of 100 female heroin
users to see what impact their addiction has on other crimes. She found that they committed a
variety of crimes to support their habit including dealing drugs, prostitution, shoplifting, burglary,
conning, pick pocketing, auto theft, and pimping. She stated that addiction to a drug like heroin
changed the criminal patterns of sex work where high-class call girls earn increasingly less money,
going in a downward spiral and eventually becoming prostitutes on the streets. The more addicted
they become to the drug, the less physically attractive they become, making them less wanted as
high-class call girls and more lower-class prostitutes. Somehow male heroin addicts don’t suffer
the same social stigma attached to addiction than women. Men are excused for not looking good,
whereas women need a very good excuse. Addict women are not attractive to non-addict men. So
when these women look for partners, they choose other addicts that lead them in a vicious cycle
that is impossible to escape.
Inciardi, Lockwood and Pottieger did research on the devastation of crack-cocaine in women’s lives.
They found a few motivations for women’s use of the drug. They stated that women have a
different motive than men. Men use it for a “pick-me-up”, for thrills and pleasure, where women use
it as a type of self-medication. These women were victims of extensive physical and sexual abuse.
They made the link to say that these females use drugs to feel better about their abuse – self-
medicating. Similar to Rosenbaum, they saw how drug use impacts patterns of sex work and crime.
They explained crack house sex, where there is an economic exchange for sex for drugs in crack
houses by desperate female addicts. This destroys the economic viability of street prostitution,
because they sell their bodies for drugs and not money. In order to get money to look after
themselves or their families, they commit other types of crime.
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