ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the six paths that the women took to the illegal activities that resulted in their arrests as the final category of events that constituted their gender entrapment. The first path to Rikers Island is represented by those women who were arrested for the death of one of their children. The life-history interviews revealed a second path that was associated only with the gender entrapment of the African American battered women in this study: being arrested for violent crimes directed at men other than the batterer in a symbolic or projected retaliation for past abuse. The third path that characterized a pattern in the population of women interviewed for this study was those women who were arrested and detained for crimes associated with illegal sex work. The fourth path to criminal activities was exemplified by the women whose crimes were arson or other property damage, and assaults of their batterers during an abusive episode.
