THE WOMAN CRIMINAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4796, 7 January 1925, Page 1

THE WOMAN CRIMINAL.

CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.

(By Frederic Clifton, in the “Daily Mail.”)

Recently the criminal courts have been occupied with cases of major importance in which women have been the offenders, demonstrating that tn crime, as in everything else, there is change and progress—or should it be retrogression ? Call it what you will, the fact remains that to-day the police forces of the world can no longer afford to ignore or even treat lightly the female element in crime.

This does not mean that they have done so in the "past > a good detective never ignores anything, but women have not hitherto been regarded seriously as perpetrators of offences requiring a maximum of physical cour-

age - ■ E A Scores of them have been found guilty of murder, the most heinous of all crimes ; but that does not require courage. Indeed it is often the outcome of cowardice, or, so far ais women are concerned, of outraged vanity —and vainty, and the means to gratify it, has always been regarded in tire past as one of the two chief incentives to crime by women.

They have always beein looked upon as ‘slinky” criminals; cunning and treacherous, but rarely physically dangerous. Blackmail, shoplifting, petty swindling, and the like have been their chief crimes,, all of which have their origin in a desire for “easy money” to satisfy the craving for a good time and a comfortable mode. of living without work —a fairly definite form of- vanity.

The second incentive to crime by women has always been summed up in the word “sex.” This is the incentive which has frequently had murder as its outcome, and with the exception of baby-farming it will be difficult to find another cause which has sent a woman to the gallows. Now, however, there is a decided change in the criminal activities ot women. They are challenging comparison with men in the nature and daring of their operations. There was the “Bobbed Hair Bandit” of New York, the woman who, without a tremor held up meii and banks and detied armed police. In our own country there have been a number of women burglars, a nefarious practice which demands a courage and skill rarely credited to women.

Then it has been frequently suggested that a woman* is the moving spirit in some of the highly organised and. cleverly controlled gangs of swindlers nndA'dope” syndicates preying upon the public—indeed, there is hardly any criminal activity to-day in which women are not alleged to be indulging.

What is the explanation 1 Some people find it an aftermath of the war , f GU r years of broadening experience for women, in which they found themselves able to perform duties regarded exclusively as the tasks of men—four years which developed their (spirit of adventure, now finding outlet ’ii crime.