Uncovering the Role of Women in Crime - A Manifesto

Uncovering the Role
of Women in Crime
A Manifesto – Insights from
the OpenCrime Conference #1
Hosted by
BuzzingCities
Lab

Women play an increasingly important role
as members or supporters for criminal and
terrorist organizations, but they can also
become key stakeholders in the fight against
crime. The OpenCrime conference discovered
current blindspots and upcoming challenges.
The role of women as a group affected by organized or
domestic crime, as offenders as well as potential changemakers,
is often overlooked in media and public debates.
But the radicalization and imprisonment rates of female
offenders are on the rise globally, as well as the rate of hate
crimes against women - including in the digital realm.
Women can also play a vital role in crime prevention and
other anti-crime strategies.
At the OpenCrime conference #1 on “The Role of Women in
Crime” by the think tank BuzzingCities Lab that took place
within the Bosch Alumni Network in Berlin, investigative
journalists, criminologists and other crime and security
experts from organizations like Investigative Reporting
Project Italy (IRPI), Mafia? Nein, Danke!, Organized Crime
& Corruption Reporting Project (OCCPR), King`s College
London, Netzpolitik.org and Amnesty International took a
closer look at the trends and challenges related to the role
of women in crime and within the justice system and developed
recommendations on how to improve reporting on
the phenomenon.
Photos: Nick Jaussi, Cover photo: Sonja Peteranderl

Renounce sexist stereotypes: Media
coverage should avoid gender clichés when
reporting on the role of women in crime.
Too often, media coverage focuses on unusual cases and
stereotypes – and represents only a fraction of reality.
Criminal women are stylized into beasts or unapproachable,
almost mythical persons.
Amanda Knox, the young American woman accused in Italy
of her alleged involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher
and later acquitted, was given the name „The Angel with the
Ice Eyes“ worldwide. Her story also became a Netflix movie.
Reports about the main accused defendant in the trial of
the German right wing extremist terror cell NSU, Beate
Zschäpe, often focused on her appearance, her clothes and
her mood. Women who join cartels or terrorist organizations
are regularly sexualized – like the German „ISIS bride“ Derya.
When the media portray the crimes and character traits of
criminal women, this is subject to different rules than the
reporting about male offenders. Journalists should make sure
that they are not falling into sexist clichés and that they
pay attention to facets beyond rigid victim or perpetrator
dichotomies.
Pay attention to the patterns: Women
commit different crimes than men - and they
commit them differently.
Criminal women are an exception in statistical terms. According
to the UN report „Global Study on Homicide“, violence
is male-dominated: More than 80 percent of the murder
victims registered in 2017 worldwide were boys and men
– in recent years, also more than 90 percent of the murder
suspects were male.
According to the UN, around 87,000 women were murdered
in 2017, more than half of whom were killed by partners or
family members. However, women do become perpetrators
of domestic violence, albeit to a lesser extent, especially
when it comes to care: for example, the abuse of children
or people in need for long-term care. Here, the proportion
of female criminals is higher simply because the upbringing
of children and care is predominantly provided by women.
The same applies to female serial killers who, according to
the US criminologist Scott Bonn, do not make up more than

20 percent of the perpetrator group. „Unlike male serial
killers, they rarely look for victims in public, but find them
in their family or at work,“ writes Bonn. They tend to become
active only where they know their way around.
As a rule, women commit less serious crimes than men.
Often it is about theft, fraud or insult. According to crime
statistics, more than 80 percent of violent crimes in Germany
are committed by men. Instead of focusing on bloody isolated
acts, news coverage should rather uncover, analyze and
make comprehensible larger contexts, trends and social
causes related to crime and the judicial system.
Don’t fall for the Narco princess story: The
role of women in criminal ecosystems has to
be revalued.
Men continue to dominate criminal organizations, but the
role of women in the criminal ecosystem is underestimated.
„The Italian mafia groups are dominated by men. But the
success of the mafia depends on women,“ says the Australian
journalist Connie Agius from ABC News, who has researched
the role of women in the Italian mafia.
She says women act as political pawns, as binding elements
between mafia families and as couriers. „Despite the machismo,
the ‚men of honour’ are pointing out that a daughter
is marrying into another mafia family to resolve conflicts,
and a mother is teaching her children the values of crime
to ensure the survival of the organization and protect her
business interests”, Agius says. „They need a woman and a
sister to send messages to and from prison cells or to launder
money. Mafia business can’t thrive without a woman.“
Even in countries like Mexico and Brazil, women play an
increasingly active role in gangs and cartels. In management
or key positions, however, they are usually only promoted if
they themselves come from a criminal family, if their husbands
are in prison or if they were murdered in a drug war.
Media reporting focuses above all on the starlets of the
Narco scene such as Mexico’s best-known ex-drug queen
Sandra Ávila Beltrán or Emma Coronel, the wife of the imprisoned
Sinaloa drug boss Joaquín „El Chapo“ Guzmán.
But the reality of most women working for gangs and cartels
is precarious. It is women with little education and low
income who often enter drug smuggling to escape poverty.
The risk of being arrested while smuggling is high.

„Although there are women who manage to rise in the
criminal world, their main activities are mostly smuggling,
drug trafficking with smaller quantities and smuggling drugs
into prisons,“ writes Mexican sociologist Elsa Ivette Jiménez
Valdez in an analysis. Women are still less recognized in
criminal organizations than men, are paid less, and the
majority take on riskier jobs.
Follow the Money: Journalists who investigate
the financial backbones of criminal organizations
should not forget about the women.
In the Italian mafia, but also among Russian oligarchs, criminally
acquired assets are increasingly parked in women’s
bank accounts - they are less conspicuous, have no criminal
record. The criminal origin of the money can thus be better
concealed. According to the journalist network Investigative
Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), mafiosi in Italy often use their
wives and sisters’ assets in order to protect accounts and
real estate from the authorities.
According to the Transcrime research center, one third of
all mafia assets in Italy are owned by women - at the same
time, the proportion of women convicted in the mafia
context is only 2.5 per cent. The proportion of women as
owners or participants of confiscated mafia companies is
twice as high as the proportion of female company owners
in the legal economy.
Brazil’s corruption scandals of recent years have also
repeatedly brought cases to public attention in which highranking
politicians have laundered bribes via their wife’s
bank accounts. Women and children are becoming strategic
figures in complex money-laundering systems.
Examine the influence of the family: The
social context needs to be taken into account
more – as factor for radicalization as well as
deradicalization.
When reporting on the role of women in crime and radicalisation,
the family context must be given greater consideration.
If, for example, a woman is imprisoned, this also affects
the children.

Journalists should also take a closer look at gender and
terrorism. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2019,
thirteen per cent of ISIS foreign recruits were female, with
the majority of female recruits joining from the MENA region.
More than 1.000 German Islamists have travelled to war
zones of ISIS in recent years. About 50 German women and
62 children were last detained or in refugee camps in Iraq
or Syria - who as German citizens have the right to return.
The sentencing of women for ISIS support is often a grey
area. An ISIS returnee was recently convicted by the Stuttgart
Higher Regional Court for her terrorist propaganda;
however, it is controversial in the case of women who, for
example, followed their husbands to ISIS areas what they
can be charged with.
The family context can also be a factor that can help with
deradicalisation. “In my experience, motherhood can be a
motivation to get out of the mafia,“ says investigative reporter
Lorenzo Bodrero of the Investigative Reporting Project Italy
(IRPI). „Suddenly, women are no longer solely responsible
for their own actions. Not everyone immediately draws the
line, but at least they think about it - and that’s a doubt
that can be used,“ says Bodrero. He believes that journalists
should more often tell the stories of women who have
succeeded in getting out - as inspiration for others, but also
to better understand their psychological profile, background
and motivations.
Invisible inmates: What’s going on in
prisons for women must become more
transparent.
Prisons are parallel worlds from which reports are seldom
made. This does not only apply to women who are behind
bars. „On the one hand, it is a topic that usually requires a
lot of research work and a lot of access and thus patience,
on the other hand, some colleagues do not dare to do it
because it requires specific niche knowledge,“ observes the
freelance journalist Alexander Krützfeldt.
In cooperation with Süddeutscher Zeitung, Correctiv and
BR, Krützfeldt has published the investigation series „Acht
Häftlinge“ (Eight Prisoners) as well as a book of the same
name about German prisons. „There’s a fear to fail at the
topic or not to do it justice.“ Prisons are reported about
above all when, for example, an outbreak has happened.
Access to prisons is difficult to access, Krützfeldt says:

“There are some prisons that are very open - mostly those that
have just been renovated and have presentable concepts.”
Prisons are too rarely geared to the special needs of women
– because the majority of prisoners are male. According to
the German Federal Statistical Office, fewer than 3.000 of a
total of 60.000 prisoners and preventive detainees were women
in 2018. In their research, Krützfeld and his colleagues
have therefore only focused on men, „because women’s
imprisonment is completely different in terms of groups,
needs, violence and health”, he says: „We could only cover
one aspect with our means.“
Future research could explore, for example, how imprisonment
influences the relationship between mothers and
children, to what extent sexual abuse occurs in women’s
prisons or how sexual hygiene works in the prison context.
The voices of inmates could also be made more visible.
Innovate: New technologies help to
illustrate events and biographies that are
difficult to visualize.
Reporting on crimes is not so easy. If the crimes were
committed years ago, those involved may be dead. When
it comes to organized crime, gangs, cartels and the mafia,
research is not without its dangers for those involved as
well as journalists. Access to crime scenes, witnesses
or ex-criminals is often blocked or controlled by active
members.
New technologies and forms of storytelling can help not
only to dive into the past, but also to make revenge-prone
people a part of history. In the documentary „Se potessi
tornare. Donne in fuga dal crimine“ (If I could return. Women
on the run from crime) by IRPI, for example, a mafia
escapist from a witness protection program uses a virtual
reality headset to virtually visit places of her past – on the
one hand, the viewer can walk through the places, on the
other hand, he experiences the reactions and emotions of
the escapist.
Investigative journalists also have to protect their communication,
technical devices, documents and sources – however,
there are considerable vulnerabilities in both operational
and IT security.

Examine the digital weapons: Digital
violence is also a form of violence.
Digital violence is a form of violence that frequently affects
women, but is still too little noticed – there are numerous
individual case anecdotes, but no representative studies on
the topic yet.
According to the German Federal Association of Women’s
Counselling Centres bff, it is digital violence when people
are „deliberately insulted, exposed, isolated, blackmailed
and threatened“ using digital means such as mobile phones
or the Internet.
The phenomenon includes various forms of attacks with
which the perpetrators want to achieve a disparagement,
damage to reputation, social isolation and the coercion or
blackmail of a certain behaviour of those affected. In the
field of domestic violence, perpetrators use tools such as
spyware to gain control over communications and track the
victim’s whereabouts – which opens a gateway to physical
violence and crimes.

BuzzingCities Lab is a think tank founded by the journalists
and researchers Julia Jaroschewski and Sonja Peteranderl
that investigates the impact of digitalization on urban violence,
security and organized crime in megacities worldwide.
The OpenCrime initiative by BuzzingCities Lab connects
interdisciplinary experts to discuss crime trends and strategies
to prevent and fight violence and crime.
BuzzingCities.com
BuzzingCities@gmail.com
@BuzzingCities