Masculinities, crime, and criminalization

Traditional criminological discourse had a close concern with the study and control of dangerous forms of male identity, particularly working-class male delinquency, but did not tackle the relation between criminality and the socially varied attainment of male status and power. It was a male-dominated (‘masculine’) discipline that studied crime by a male norm and never developed a sufficiently critical view of the link to gender, especially to non-pathological and widespread forms of masculinity that tied to offending. The result of this was a tendency to naturalize male offending, and a reversion to gender essentialism, by explaining male wrongdoing as an inherent and pre-social phenomenon that men and boys are drawn to. This chapter provides an overview of some key features of the more recent debates regarding masculinity and crime, as well as some of the more significant empirical studies in the field. It describes the evident strengths of the masculinities paradigm in criminology. Yet it also notes the pitfalls of any gender-centric analysis of criminality that overlooks a skewed criminalization process that frequently and selectively targets, criminalizes, and punishes men and boys from disadvantaged, minority, and marginal social settings.