ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that feminist criminological research must afford women agency it is necessary to recognise that women can choose to kill and are not labouring under a mental illness or killing in retaliation to domestic violence. Women and children's violent responses to men's violence is highlighted in the collection which helps to clarify the muddy area between victimisation and offending, an ongoing part of feminist research into women's offending. Although the authors have argued for the need for more historical criminology and a marrying of the two disciplines more in Australian and New Zealand scholarly research, a number of the chapters are very much focusing on women as offenders in one specific period of time and from a historical angle. The collection therefore takes on a methodological and disciplinary mix and fills gaps in our understanding of women's criminal behaviour, punishment, and lingering effects of both in twenty-first-century Australia and New Zealand.
