Introduction

The traumatic roots of the violence are all too often overlooked, and women of colour and those from ethnic minority backgrounds are viewed simply as bad or dangerous, or alternatively not seen at all. The trauma that the women have experienced in the past, and battle, is not only overlooked in their sentencing and subsequent placement, but is also often re-enacted within custodial settings and in the community. There are powerful intergenerational factors that perpetuate these cycles of offending and trauma re-enactment that current sentencing practice overlooks. Women who step out of the role of traditional femininity are ‘doubly damned’: they are punished harshly within the criminal justice system and further condemned by wider society as evil, monstrous or otherwise depraved. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.