[8] Criminologist Robert Agnew attempted to understand the difference between men's and women's crime rates through General Strain theory.
He theorized that men and women experienced different types of strain (pressure or stress, be it physical, financial, emotional, etc.)
While men seemed more prone to react with violent or property crimes, women were viewed to respond with more self-destructive criminality, such as drug abuse.
[9] French-Canadian criminologist Marie-Andrée Bertrand and British sociologist Frances Mary Heidensohn are among those acknowledged by most as pioneers in the school of feminist criminology.
Most tests by non-feminist criminologist discredited the theory, while others found economic marginalization to be a stronger link to female crime.
[15] These results, however, came years after Marxist-feminist Dorie Klein called attention to the lack of economic and social factors considered in feminist criminological research of the time.
[19][20] Activist and scholar Julia Chinyere Oparah adds that standpoint theory "sidesteps the question of why the state responds to abused women with punishment".
Abolitionism is described as challenging "conventional definitions of crime and the law, while defying official views of the meanings and effects of punishment".
Systems that sought to criminalize and punish Black bodies, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration are seen in this theory as an ever-returning "ghost" of the Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchy.