“Lethal” Ladies or “Desperate” Housewives: Agnew's General Strain Theory and Violent Crimes Committed by Women

Abstract

Violence has always been perceived through the prism of human’s bestiality. It has been explained by the survival instincts, the dark, dominant side of humans, but rarely had it been discussed as a result of strain and frustration. And if we add women at the side of the equation with violent behavior, then we get even a darker, less researched area of criminality. Women as the dominated gender, in most of the criminological researches have been perceived as the victims, not as the offenders. The research subsumes analysis of court decisions (N= 41) in a period of five years, through which we elaborate the most important patterns of violent criminal behaviour among women in the Republic of Macedonia. The court decisions are from the area of the Basic Courts in Bitola (N=11) and Prilep (N=30). Using the information given by the women who committed the crimes, during their process, the authors will try to find out which are the origins of the strain in their lives.;Violence has always been perceived through the prism of human bestiality. It has been explained by the survival instincts, the dark, dominant side of humans, but rarely had it been discussed as a result of strain and frustration. And if we add women at the side of the equation with violent behavior, then we get even a darker, less researched area of criminality. Women as the dominant gender, in most of the criminological researches, have been perceived as the victims, not as the offenders. The research subsumes analysis of court decisions (N= 41) in a period of five years, through which we elaborate the most important patterns of violent criminal behavior among women in the Republic of Macedonia. The court decisions are from the area of the Basic Courts in Bitola (N=11) and Prilep (N=30). Using the information given by the women who committed the crimes, during their process, the authors will try to find out which are the origins of the strain in their lives.;