Amy Cullen

She/her

Working Title of PhD: Women who offend and financial punishment in Scotland

Year commenced PhD study: 2019 Institution/Organisation: University of Glasgow

Funding Source: ESRC

Full or part-time: Full time

PhD Supervisors: Dr Susan Batchelor (Glasgow) Professor Margaret Malloch (Stirling)

Synopsis of PhD:

Engaging with the limited theoretical literature concerning financial punishment, my project delivers qualitative evidence from practitioners working with women who have been fined to begin to develop a critical analysis of women’s justice at ‘the “soft end” of the criminal justice system’ (ibid., 483).

Though financial punishment scholarship in the UK remains limited, innovative international research has made greater use of qualitative evidence. Responding to these innovations and to the ‘importance of using women’s experiences as resources for social analysis’ (Harding 1983, 7) that is a defining feature of the contemporary study of women’s offending, my project will engage these methods to explore how women experience fines within the broader context of their lives and their involvement with the criminal justice system.

It will also examine the perspectives of practitioners in Scotland and the challenges they face supporting women who have experienced fines. This project produces data from a group that has yet to be adequately integrated into the existing literature and will analyse using evidence from feminist criminology and punishment theory.

Recent Publications
Cullen, A. and H. Telling (2020). ‘Paying for crime, paying for poverty?’, Inside Time, 31st October 2020. Available at: https://insidetime.org/the-more-things-change/

Cullen, A. (2022). Paradoxes, passion, and people: Financial punishment and women’s justice. EUROCRIM 2022, 22nd September 2022, Malaga.