Frances Mary Heidensohn (born 14 July 1942) is an academic sociologist and criminologist at the London School of Economics, who is acknowledged as a pioneer in feminist criminology.
She has served as chair of an NHS Health Authority, a commissioner for judicial appointments and as a member of the Sentencing Advisory Panel.
Heidensohn stayed in this role until her retirement in 2005, after which she joined the Sociology department of the London School of Economics as a visiting professor and a member of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology.
In her first article, The deviance of women: A critique and an enquiry in the British Journal of Sociology, she questioned why the low level of recorded crime by females had been largely ignored or distorted in criminological research.
In it, she advocated an intensive programme of studies to analyse the logistics of the sex-crime ratio versus the applicability of theory.