Society's attitudes toward criminal offenders changed dramatically over the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century the system of handling offenders in Montreal was highly institutionalized and based on sex- and age-specific treatment involving the Catholic Church, civic and legal authorities, and Protestant reform organizations. / A thematic study of the relationship of female offenders, concerned organizations, and the criminal justice system at the height of industrial capitalism shows that as the economy expanded and the city grew, there were increasing opportunities for women to break the law. Women's crimes were largely determined by their socio-economic status in Canadian society, often crimes of poverty and survival. The growing potential to commit crime was met with a more organized and institutionalized response and the definition of what was considered wayward female behaviour broadened. The growth of the state over the latter part of the nineteenth century in the form of new and expanded juridical and penal structures resulted in an increase in disciplining the population. For women this meant the use of laws and institutions to punish inappropriate social and sexual behaviour. / This thesis explores the gender-specific treatment of female offenders in the new institutions created ostensibly to rescue them: Fullum Street Prison for Women, the Ecole de Reforme, the Girls' Cottage Industrial School, the Juvenile Delinquents' Court, and the female police force. It looks at the construction of "criminal" and "bad" and the flexible usage of certain laws to curb unruly behaviour.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.40209 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Myers, Tamara |
| Contributors | Levesque, Andree (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001499977, proquestno: NN12445, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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