ABSTRACT
The ‘Risk Paradigm’ has traditionally struggled to adequately understand and respond to criminalised women, framing them largely as a minority group for whom the Risk-Needs-Responsivity approach can be adapted, or as an extraordinary group who commit harmful offences as the product of trauma, inappropriate relationships with men, or as a result of ‘dominance’ (Kelly, L., and Jackson, S., ‘Managing High-Risk Sex Offenders: Messages for Practice’, Insight 48,2019, https://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/insights/managing-high-risk-sex-offenders-messages-practice" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/insights/managing-high-risk-sex-offenders-messages-practice, accessed April 29th, 2021). Viewing criminalised women through the ‘risk lens’ has often characterised women as ‘at risk’, with legitimate needs reframed as offence risks, painting a picture of them as non-agentic victims of circumstance, context, and history. Paradoxically, women who commit harmful offences, especially homicide, are painted as extraordinary, monstrous, and extreme. Arguably, both characterisations are products of unhelpful gender framing, producing not only an ‘at risk’ versus ‘posing a risk’ dichotomy that potentially skews interventions and management but also reduces women offenders to niche research subjects and case studies ripe for voyeurism (for example Myra Hindley). This chapter will critically review these framings and the resultant impact on understandings of and responses to women in the world of risk. Importantly, the chapter will highlight some possible alternatives and solutions to the more unhelpful consequences of the ‘risk lens’ for women.
