Bad Victims: An Approach to the Perspectives and Experiences of Criminal Women

Abstract

aims is to explore concrete experiences of delinquent women, based on gender and violence as intertwined analytical dimensions. The qualitative study is based on interviews with three women released from Buenos Aires (Argentina) prison system, with different criminal trajectories. The testimonies show, on the one hand, how their income in this masculinized environment destabilized their gender self-perceptions and, on the other, how the advance of drug trafficking and anti-drug policies produced a young, deprofessionalized and generically “disempowered” female subject.