Women Offending and Victimisation Perspectives

Description

This course will offer students an introduction to the major explanatory theories and debates that inform these complementary fields of human services practice. The historical context of approaches to women’s offending and to the victimisation of women will be traversed in the first half of the course. The latter half of the course will focus on practice issues that arise in working with women in these two areas.
Practice with women offenders will consider issues of responses to women in the respective fields of police, probation, courts and prisons. Practice with women as victims will involve rape crisis centres, the Women’s Refuge, Stopping Violence Services and victim support. The role of dependent children and policy responses, and how these intersect with policy responses for women, will be considered in the context of potentially competing interests.
Learning Goals:
• To examine the social, economic and political implications of violence perpetrated by and towards women on New Zealand society
• To introduce students to research and literature pertaining to child protection and female perpetrated violence against children, from an international and New Zealand perspective
• To explore issues relating to risk assessment and prediction related to female offending
• To introduce the area of family violence, including violence in intimate relationships, elder abuse and violence perpetrated by children / young people
• To consider formal and informal social responses to violence