Genders, crime and criminal justice: Power, victimization and institutional harm

Abstract

The editorial examines the foundational role of gender in defining, governing, and sanctioning deviance within sociological and criminological scholarship. The authors argue that criminal justice institutions actively participate in the construction of harm by imposing gendered expectations on credibility and "deservingness," which often results in secondary and tertiary victimization. By analyzing diverse contexts—ranging from historical judicial narratives and media framing of femicide to the cis-normative architecture of prisons—the text exposes "legal blind spots" that systematically misrecognize or pathologize marginalized subjects, particularly those at the intersection of race, sexuality, and migration status. Ultimately, the issue advocates for a paradigmatic shift toward abolitionist and transformative justice frameworks that prioritize relational accountability and survivor safety over punitive, state-centered rationalities that frequently reproduce the very violence they claim to prevent