To browse Academia. Underworld is a contested term; a key argument of this chapter is that it is a term that elides easy definition, or a fixed criteria as to whom belongs to it. Historically, the underworld was considered a social and spatial milieu in which individuals not only committed crimes, but adopted the identity of criminals. Alana J Piper. Larceny from the person, or pickpocketing, was the most common form of indictable crime committed by female offenders in turn-of-the-century Melbourne.
It was an offence particularly likely to appear within the criminal careers of recidivist female offenders. Female pickpocketing, however, was notoriously difficult to prosecute. The usual differences found in trial outcomes for men and women were exacerbated by the specific contexts in which such robberies occurred, that is in the context of solicitation or sex work.
Using court records and newspaper accounts, this article compares the prosecution patterns and public perceptions of male burglars and female pickpockets. Both offences were associated in the Anglophone world with membership of the criminal classes, and in the colonial context with concerns about a remnant convict populace.
Moreover, both male burglary and female pickpocketing occurred in intimate contexts that threatened the possibility of sexual violence or uncontrolled female sexuality. Yet although both crimes were the subject of community concerns, the conviction rates for burglary and pickpocketing differed dramatically. This article examines the ways in which the gendered contexts of burglary and pickpocketing—in relation to constructions of victims as much as defendants—exacerbated the usual differences found in trial outcomes for men and women, as well as other factors that served to place men at far greater risk of conviction.
It is suggested that a close reading of the victimization narratives of these two offences complicates traditional perspectives on the policing of male and female sexualities in the criminal justice system. Alana J Piper , Victoria Nagy.
