ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine how female criminality is determined at the initial stages of the criminal justice process. It describes the current knowledge about the levels of female criminality and the flaws in this existing data. It then moves on to an analysis of the processes by which certain female actors
are judged to be criminal, arrested, cautioned or charged. Finally, it considers information on the type of offences for which the majority of women are proceeded against and the implications of this knowledge for those examining criminal law from a feminist perspective.
