Frauen im Gefängnis : zu Bildern der kriminellen Frau am Beispiel von Justizvollzugsanstalten in Nordrhein-Westfalen (1920 - 1950)

The subject matter of our research is examining the question whether particular contemporary perceptions regarding the criminal woman access regional journalistic reporting as well as prison-internal ways of representing. Exemplarily we analyse resources from Siegen and its surroundings.
Since the 19th century images of the criminal woman have accompanied the criminal discourse, which for this part expresses cultural gender concepts in the respective time and influences these perceptions likewise. Nowadays the term female crime is still in use in criminology, whereas nobody talks about male crime that way. A woman who became a criminal is described as a deviation from crime, which itself is already considered abnormal. Explaining the phenomenon of female crime adequately, first of all the two categories of the word composition, gender and crime, will be commented on. In doing so the main focus lies on a critical review of the relation of the two categories: For what reason is crime associated with men in public? Are there any references to different conviction standards concerning men and women? In contemporary scientific literature regarding delinquent women, to what extent are there basic approaches of assumptions shaped by the positive school of mystified and demonized femininity? These questions go along with our discourse analytical reworking of the history of images of the criminal woman.
Over and above we gather source material from the 20th century in selected archives in South Westphalia as well as in the North Rhine-Westphalia State Archive. By means of a qualitative analysis of content we will examine selected newspaper articles and personal and general files exemplarily regarding our question and hypotheses. Our research focuses on the question in how far the interdependency of the categories gender and crime has an impact on the notions of normality.