ABSTRACT
This book is a case study in social control and its resistance. Its aim has been two-fold:
— to analyse the production of a certain group of female law-breakers as ‘nondescript women’; that is, women who, because they do not ‘fit’ any professionally defined categories, are largely both neglected by, and to some extent free of, professional control;
— to describe the ideological and material conditions which underpin this production and which allow this group of offending women to stand in a metonymical relationship to certain other women who, while they may not break the law, nevertheless offend against-and are offended by-the accepted norms of femininity.
