Challenging Practice of Challenging Women? Female Offending and Illicit Drug Use

Abstract

Current debate about the treatment of women within the Criminal Justice System is complex but there is now sufficient evidence that, for some female offenders, probation officers may be practising in ways which reinforce the oppression they experience in wider society. By drawing on three separate but related pieces of research, Julian Buchanan, Steve Collett and Paul McMullan of Merseyside Probation Service highlight practice dilemmas in the way the criminal Justice process intervenes with and is experienced by female drug users.