Delinquency and norm violations by women have always been in particular need of explanation, as they diverge with conceptions of the female nature and role. Linked to the question of the causes and motives of female criminality is the question of the appropriate and effective punishment of women.;xNLx;This CrimLine is intended to help understand how today's women's penal system is organized legally and politically. The CrimLine reveals the social morals and imaginaries about female crime that come to shape the contemporary treatment of incarcerated women. Spectacular criminal cases will be used to illustrate how women's crimes are dealt with differently over the years and in accordance with changing social gender relations. These social debates also reflect the paradigm shifts in the criminological theorization of female delinquency. At the same time, criminology as an applied science influences national and international penal politics and legislation, and thus has sever impact on the everyday experiences of sentenced and imprisoned women. ;xNLx;Although taking into account national developments, the local examples of within this CrimLine are taken from Berlin/Prussia.
Built in 1688 in Berlin and Brandenburg, the Prussian Zucht- und Spinnhaus Spandau (Spandau Jail and Spinning House) is an institution for the deprivation of liberty, where women are also imprisoned.
Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) is a British prison reformer and follower of the Quakers. In 1813, during a visit to Newgate Women's Prison, she found the task of a lifetime. The unimaginable conditions there prompted her to found the "Women's Association for the Advancement of Female Prisoners" (Germ. “Frauenverein zur Förderung weiblicher Gefangener”) in 1817.
In 1828, Gesche Margarethe Gottfried was arrested in Bremen and finally executed in 1831. She is accused of poisoning 15 people, including her husband, her 3 children, her second husband and her fiancé. Today she is considered one of the most notorious poisoners in German history.
As is the case in the Quakers' approaches to reform, the establishment of separate women's prisons or the segregation of female inmates from male inmates is also being discussed in Germany/Prussia and Berlin. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first women's prisons are established as a result of the prison reform movement and the emerging scientific discipline of prison studies (Germ. "Gefängniskunde"). Both the reform movement and academia argue for greater segregation and classification of inmates to optimize the prison system - and not to improve the conditions of incarcerated women. In 1838, the first German women-only prisons are established in Sagan (Silesia), Wartenburg (Prussia) and in Bruchsal (Baden)
Initially organized as a mixed-sex prison, it is converted into an all-female prison as early as 1868 under the name "Royal Prussian women's prison" (Germ. "königlich-preussisches Weiber-Gefängnis"). It continues to serve as a prison for women during the periods of Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the German Democratic Republic until the prison is closed down in 1974.
A central part of the founding of the German Empire, the so-called Kaiserreich, in 1871 is the ambition to establish a uniform legal and prison system throughout the German Reich.
Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and known to be the founder of modern criminology, Ceseare Lombroso publishes the book "La Donna Delinquente: La prostituta e la donna normale" (engl. "Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman", co-authored with Guglielmo Ferrero). The book applies a Social Darwinian and biological-anthropological approach to explain crime, and in particular women's offenses.
At the International Prison Congress in Paris in 1895, the consideration of and adaptation to female needs in the penal system is also on the agenda. The discussion is led by prison officials who regularly use their everyday experiences to intervene into criminological theorizing and debates.
Sociologist Emile Durkheim develops a Theory of Anomie to describe a social condition of disintegration which allows for the emergence of criminal behaviour. This social condition is marked by a lack of social norms and increased individualisation, as well as by a discrepancy between the expectations of citizens and the limited goods available to them. Although Durkheim considers a certain level of crime as "normal" within society, he observes the increase in crime rates within situations in which people cannot reach their aims with legitimate and legal means.
As there is no unified penitentiary law (see entry on German Empire from 1871) the legally non-binding Bundesrat Guidelines from 1897 are the only regulations regarding the penal system that apply throughout the whole Reich.
At the 1898 and 1901 meetings of the "Kongress deutscher Strafanstaltsbeamter" (Engl. "Congress of German Prison Officials") the suggestion is discussed to employ female prison staff in women's prisons.
In 1902 the Prussian Interior Ministry issues a set of regulations for the prisons under its administration. Similar to the Bundesrat Guidelines, the regulations include the detention of women in separate institutions.
In October 1904, Elisabeth Wiese is convicted by a Hamburg jury court. She is charged with attempted murder of her husband, murder of five foster children, pandering with her daughter ("Kuppelei"), abortion, perjury and forgery of documents. She is executed on February 2, 1905. The imposition and execution of the death penalty is already a rarity at this point.
On 23 July 1908, Grete Beier was beheaded. A Saxon court had previously sentenced her to death for murdering her husband, and for embezzlement, forgery and abortion, but at the same time issued a recommendation that Grete Beier be pardoned. Surprisingly, however, the king refused the pardon.
The director of Bruchsal women's prison, Josef Lenhard, is among the most active advocates for prison reform. Based on his experiences, he feels compelled to intervene into psychological and criminological debates on women's crime, criminality and women-specific confinement.
Around the turn of the century, a public debate, led by prison officials, about female criminality arises in Imperial Germany. The very low numbers of female offenders at that time (as well as today) give rise to discussion: it is feared that with the increasing employment of women, crime rates will inevitably increase. This fear is supported by the assumption that women have had less opportunity to commit crimes until now due to the fact that their activities have so far been restricted to the private sphere of the family and household. In this sense, the debate on female criminality is linked to the demands and emancipation efforts of the bourgeois women's movement, which feels compelled to react.
In March 1922, Elli Klein, with the complicity of her friend Grete Nebbe, poisons her violent husband in Berlin. A court sentences Elli Klein to four years in prison (Germ. "Gefängnis"). Grete Nebbe is sentenced to 18 months in jail (Germ. "Zuchthaus").
The "Principles on the Execution of Prison Sentences" ("Reichsratsgrundsätze"), issued on July 7th, 1923, represent Germany's valid transnational prison regulations until 1934, setting new standards both quantitatively and qualitatively.
US sociologist of the symbolic intreactionsit school Edwin Sutherland develops the Theory of Differential Association to explain criminal behavior. He argues that criminal behavior is learned through social interaction and communication within social and intimate groups.
18-year-old Käthe Hagedorn is found guilty of manslaughter and crimes of indecency and sentenced to eight years in prison. Previously, she had tried to sexually assault the neighbor's daughter. When the girl resisted, she stabbed her and then also her younger brother. She then manipulated the bodies of the children.
The Nazi takeover of power in 1933 brings a gradual shift from the idea of education and rehabilitation to a prioritization of atonement, retribution, and incapacitation. Criminal and penal policies directed at women follow the National Socialist ideology of race and gender.
Frank Tannenbaum is known to be the founder of the labelling approach in criminology. Instead of asking for the causes of criminal behavior (etiology), representatives of the labelling approach illuminate processes of criminalization and its stigmatizing consequences on people labelled as criminal.
The only women-specific regulations issued by the NS Reich Ministry of Justice are the "Special Ordinance on the Execution of Prison Sentences and Pretrial Detention for Women" from February 2, 1939.
On July 22, 1940 the new ordinance on the execution of prison sentences for the "Unification of Service and Execution Regulations for the Execution of Sentences in the Area of the Reich Administration of Justice" enters into force.
After the end of the war, Control Council Directive No. 19, entitled "Principles for the Administration of German Prisons and Jails" (Germ. "Grundsätze für die Verwaltung der deutschen Gefängnisse und Zuchthäuser"), is to reorganize the penal system.
In Hamburg, the first of several trials is held to determine the guilt of the camp staff of the Ravensbrueck concentration camp. After numerous sentences of death or long imprisonment, six more trials follow in the next year and a half. In addition to numerous men, several female camp employees are also accused and sentenced.
The legal scholar and women's rights activist Helga Einsele becomes director of the Preungesheim women's prison in Frankfurt in 1947. During her tenure, she uses all possible means to introduce a liberal, humane and treatment-oriented penal system. She advocates for an emancipatory reform of women's penal system. She pioneers measures in her prison such as open detention, mother-child facilities and opportunities for prisoners to have their say, which did not become common practice until the Prison Act is passed in 1977 (see entry on prison reform, 1977).
In July 1947, the trial against the two-time child murderer Irma K. begins in the Koblenz Regional Court. After her husband was drafted into the Second World War, she was left to fend for herself with two children. Rumors about her alleged infidelity reached her husband at the front and he divorced her. In the context of housing shortages, hygienic deprivation, lack of food and warm clothing in the immediate post-war period, Irma K. killed the two children they had together in 1945. Like Elisabet Wiese, she is eventually sentenced to death. However, the sentence is not carried out due to the newly adopted Constitutional Law.
The United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights provides the point of departure for the later formulation of prioner rights.
From 1949 to 1985, the women's prison in West Berlin is located in the Moabit district, in the former military detention center on Lehrter Street, which was built in 1900.
The Council of Europe releases a first Human Rights Framework based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights with roughly the same core statements.
US criminologst Albert Reiss coints the Social Control Theory which aims at understanding law and norm abiding behaviour. The theory states that people's attachment to social relationships, norms and values encourages them to voluntarily abide to the rules. It thus posits a lack of social mores and social control as crucial for the emergence of criminal behaviour. Crime, Reiss argues, results from a failure in social and personal control.
On September 20, 1954, Christa Lehmann is sentenced: As one of the few female serial killers, she is sentenced to three life terms. She is accused of poisoning her husband, her father-in-law and her best friend.
The United Nations release the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners as the first international human rights policy formulating basic principles for the treatment of prisoners and the management of prisons.
In 1956, under the direction of prison director Helga Einsele, the Preungesheim Prison was the first West German prison to allow women to keep their newborn babies with them until the end of the breastfeeding period.
The first regulation of the penal system to apply uniformly throughout the Federal Republic is adopted. Although the "Service and Execution of Sentences Regulations" (Germ. "Dienst- und Vollzugsordnung") are influenced by the Mininum Rules of the United Nations, they do not abandon the idea of atonement as the purpose of punishment, contrary to the intentions of the Minimum Rules.
In line with the contemporary approach to pathologize criminal behaviour, German-american social worker Gisela Konopka argues against biological explanations of female crime. Applying a psychoanalytical approach, she points to the mental dimension of female delinquency, e.g. to specific feelings of lonelyness, a negative self-image, experienced dependencies of men and fear of and mistrust towards figures of authority.
The United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights makes significant amendments to these rights, also with regard to prisoners in particular. For example, it states the central role of rehabilitation/resocialisation as key principle of imprisonment.
In their publication “Kriminologie. Leitfaden für Kriminalbeamte“ (Engl. "Criminology. Guidelines for Criminal Police Officers") the Federal Office for Criminal Investigations (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) refers to biological criminology in order to explain the quantitative difference between female and male crime.
1968 the first prison law, the "The Penitentiary and Reintegration Act" (Germ.: "Strafvollzugs- und Wiedereingliederungsgesetz") of the German Democratic Republic is enacted in 1968. The law follows the goal, already laid down in the GDR constitution of 1949, that the penal system should serve education and correction through joint productive work. However, the penal system practiced until then had already deviated from the 1945 Control Council Directive.
The Council of Europe releases the European Prison Rules (Resolution (73) 5) based on the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Its aim is to strengthen UN rules, including those concerning women, on the European continent.
As a pioneer of feminist criminology, Dietlinde Gipser publishes her study "Mädchenrkiminalität. Soziale Bedingungen abweichenden Verhaltens" (Engl.: "Crime of Girls. Social Conditions of Deviant Behaviour"). As the title suggests, Gipser argues for a sociological approach to crime, in particular focussing on social roles, and rejects biological and anthropological explanations.
Based on the sociological apporach that identifies the stricter and tighter social control of women as causes of women's lesser involvement in crime, US american criminologist Freda Adler is the first to develop the so-called Theory of Emancipation. Motivated by the observed rise in female youth delinquency, Adler argues that women's involvement in crime rises due to the gradual liberation of women.
On Jan 1st, 1977, the Federal Prison Act enters into force and replaces the 1961 Service and Execution Regulations.
In the 1970s, the Theory of Chivalry gains academic attention. Representatives of the Theory of Chivalry argue that the small number of convicted female offenders results from the fact that criminal justice institutions - mainly represented by men - treat women with leniency.
Under the slogan „Women’s Rights are Human Rights“, the identification of the fact that the rights of women are frequently disregarded results in the development of particular Human Rights instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
It is not until the late 1970s that a lively debate about women's prison system begins in West Germany. The debate is conducted primarily by female employees of penal institutions and by those involved in social work and offender support. It takes place at numerous conferences and is reflected in many publications.
In the course of the 1970s, a feminist criminology is being established within academic criminology. Feminists criticize criminology and criminal justice's focus on male perpetrators. The respective studies, they argue, and theories could therefore not be applied to female offenders. Analysing female violence through the lense of a male criminology would lead to the construction of certain types of female offenders that resemble the fears and worldviews of men. In order to counter male criminology, Elsbeth Broekling puts forward the Theory of Double Oppression which states that women's lesser involvement in crime results from their oppression within the capitalistic system and patriarchal structures.
In the 1980s, the West Berlin women's prison is rebuilt. Unlike the earlier buildings, the new location in Ploetzensee places great emphasis on security.
The COE revises the European Prison Rules in order to account for the social situation in Europe, for new theories of punishment and the changing practices of correction. With Resolution No. (87) 3, the COE adopts the new European Prison Rule. For the first time, a separate section is introduced to address the incarceration of women and toddlers.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close