[1] She began her career as a high school and college English professor and switched to criminal justice in her mid-thirties.
She continued affiliation with Northeastern University as an adjunct professor overseeing dissertation students, but not teaching regular courses.
[2] At the beginning of the 1990s, Rafter accounted for gender in the eugenic movement in the United States, showing how women were negatively affected with biological notions of being carriers of disease through reproduction.
[2] Rafter achieved a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from State University of New York, Albany, which sparked her academic career in feminist criminology.
[citation needed] Rafter began researching and creating arguments for the feminist cause after her book White Trash: the Eugenic Family Studies 1877-1919.
[6] Rafter’s work on female prison systems occurred during the time when feminism was becoming a focal point in critical criminology.
[2] Rafter’s Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society has been cited a total of twenty-one times which is indicative of her influence.
[4] Her historical account of eugenic family studies published in 1988 and, more recently, her book on the biological theories and writings of Earnest A. Hooton, have both been cited five times.
Allegedly, Rafter’s most influential contribution to feminist criminology was her re-translation and resource guide to Cesare Lombroso’s La Donna Delinquente in which she reinterprets women as being inferior and argues, therefore, their committing crimes at a lower level than male offenders.