Anne Logan, Feminism and Criminal Justice. A Historical Perspective

Louise A. Jackson
2011 Crime, History & Societies  
Far from emerging in academic departments in the 1970s/80s, Anne Logan's book demonstrates extremely convincingly that what can be termed a feminist criminological critique was alive, kicking and increasingly influential in England from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. It was located in women's associational culture and its social significance lay in the real successes achieved by its campaigns for criminal justice reform. The origins of this movement are of course well-charted; Logan's
more » ... ductory chapter offers a brief overview of the contributions of J.S. Mill, Elizabeth Fry, Frances Power Cobbe and Josephine Butler in opposing the sexual double standard engrained within the criminal and civil law, and in shaping middle-class women's philanthropic activity in rescue work and prison visiting. The work of Sheila Jeffreys, Lucy Bland and Susan Kingsley-Kent has drawn attention to suffragette campaigns to highlight the inadequate treatment of women and child victims of assault in the courts. The substantial contribution of Logan's book lies in its coverage of the period 1920-1960, adding to a growing historiography that has blown out of the water the assumption that feminism simply ebbed away between so-called 'first' and 'second' waves. 2 Central to Logan's thesis is the concept of the 'feminist-criminal-justice-reformnetwork', which she clearly demonstrates to have been operational across the twentieth century -with its origins in the nineteenth. She offers us an exhaustive mapping -based on meticulous archival research -of the individuals and lobby groups
doi:10.4000/chs.1275 fatcat:bulylbzx7ffanflq5345n4epoy