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Conference Papers

Homicide : women as offenders

Kenneth Polk

Published in:
Women and the law : proceedings of a conference held 24-26 September 1991
Patricia Weiser Easteal and Sandra McKillop (eds.)
ISBN 0 642 18639 1 ; ISSN 1034-5086
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1993
(AIC Conference Proceedings; no. 16)

Abstract

Polk reviews homicide cases perpetrated by females in Victoria and compares the themes found in these killings to those he has found in homicides perpetrated by men. He concludes that when women kill, the victim is usually a child or a partner, the latter precipitated by his violence. Polk's findings reveal that the criminal justice system is more lenient to female defendants, particularly when the victim is a child.