A reflective study on adoptees taken out by Mednick et al (1987) focused on court convictions in Denmark and established that there were 14,000 adoptees within the small European country. He wanted to examine the relationship between the adoptees criminal convictions and the convictions of their adoptive and biological parents. Mednick then looked through the data that was based on a register of adoptees in Denmark, which has information on them and their biological and adoptive parents. Then if any of the parents had court convictions, they were used as a basis for criminal involvement. When investigating both parents and the adoptees, the details included there sex, date of birth, occupation, address etc. All this information …show more content…
An example of one of the most famous feminists in society is Carol Smart (1948). Over the years she has wrote many books based on a feminist perspective. Her view is a mixture of social and radical feminism when defining the legal system in relation to women and significant issues that affect women in society. In Carol Smart 's book, Women, crime and criminology (1977) she puts forward a feminist critique of both contemporary and classical theories in relation to female criminality. It discusses the issue that criminology has been mainly male orientated throughout history and they treat female criminality as being insignificant in the study of crime. Smart takes on the studies of prostitution and rape and acknowledges women are sometimes unfairly treated. This is because in the eyes of the law, they think in some cases that it is the women that is the offender of these crimes, and not the victim. Instead of helping and protecting women in these situations, they are made to talk about their horrific experience to the 'men in power '. She uses this example when explaining the law because it is not only gender bias, but the male profession design in society is used protect men. On the other hand, when she talks about the treatment of female offenders, the law is seen to be more lenient on women. However, in some situations women can be discriminated in the legal and penal system. This is because women are less likely to be involved in crime than men, because they are given the image that they are meant to be loving, compassionate and caring and not involved in criminal activities. However, feminists disagree with this image that society is giving women. In some cases their urge to commit crime is just as high as men, which means that women should not be treated differently or discriminated