Gender-based theories and recent crime incidents in Baltimore City

Female Criminality

Yes, I do agree with the criminological theories about female criminality in Dr. Seabrook's dissertation chapter 2. Seabrook's theories require a theoretical, social, and historical context before understanding them or evaluating their efficacy. Seabrook does a solid job of providing a theoretical history of female criminality. Significantly, Seabrook notes the overwhelming presence of male-based theories and the lack of female consideration across many relevant disciplines. Seabrook eventually argues that theories of female criminality cannot exist in a world dominated by male-based theories and data collected from only males. In order for theories of female criminality to flourish and to prove valuable, there are balances that must be achieved in greater society. For hundreds of years women have been considered to be too physically weak and too weak-minded to sustain a criminal career. Sexism and misogyny in areas of education, medicine, psychology, sociology, criminology and other areas have stunted insight into the nature and history of female criminality.

As for the article in the Baltimore Sun about the mother who stabbed her eight-month-old baby several times, there is yet no way to definitely predict crime. Therefore, no one could have predicted exactly that this woman would commit such violence on her child. Though the future is not wholly predictable, we can make educated guesses. We can do our research to eliminate some known factors and understand the unknown factors. I will not begin to blame this incident solely upon the Social Services or the child's social worker. Social work is an exceptionally arduous professional that is not a career that will people enter into to get rich. It serves a vital function in a very inharmonious and dangerous world. Social workers are often overworked, overwhelmed, overloaded, and short staffed. Yes, the assigned social worker should have demonstrated responsibility and diligence; some measure of that may have helped the child to be removed from the mother's care before the stabbing. It is possible, yet it is uncertain. What is important is that the social work was present while the stabbing occurred, restrained the mother and saved the child's life. I am not sure what could have been done to prevent this on the DSS' part. Somewhere in the intake process and in the visits, it could have been made more of a priority to get this child into a safe home. We can only speculate. There are cases when DSS does everything by the book and the situation still comes out terribly for the child. All I say is that enough staff, funding, resources, safeguards, and follow up saves lives generally.