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Summary
Women who kill are frequently subject to discourses of pathology. This article examines the cases of three women convicted of murder in Ireland following Independence in 1922 and explores how each woman was constructed as pathologised. Using archival materials, the article demonstrates that diagnoses were contingent and imbricated with notions of gender, morality, dangerousness, and class. For two of the women, their pathologisation led to them being certified as insane and admitted to the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum. However, pathologisation could be mediated by respectable femininity. The article also explores the pathways which facilitated judgements of pathology, including the acceptance of a framework of degeneracy, or hereditary insanity, and examines how women could be redeemed from the diagnoses of 'insanity'.

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Table of Cases -- Table of Statutes -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- I. Overview -- II. Structure -- III. Themes -- PART I: GENDER AND THE CRIMINAL LAW -- 1. Sexual Offences Law in Ireland: Countering Gendered Stereotypes in Adjudications of Consent in Rape Trials -- I. Introduction -- II. Rape Myths and Realities: The Attitude Problem in Rape Trials -- III. Defining Consent: The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 -- IV. Unfinished Business: The Honest Belief Defence -- V. Beyond Legislative Reform: Extra-Legal Initiatives to Tackle Rape Stereotypes in the Courtroom and Beyond -- VI. Conclusion -- 2. Prostitution Law -- I. Introduction -- II. Historical Development of Irish Prostitution Law -- III. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 -- IV. The 2017 Reform -- V. Context for the 2017 Law Reform -- VI. Conclusion -- 3. Gender, Prostitution and Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation -- I. Introduction -- II. Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation: The Global and European Context -- III. International Response -- IV. An Ill-Informed Legal Approach -- V. An Inoperable Law -- VI. Failure to Recognise the Intersection of Gender, Migration, Prostitution and Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation -- VII. The Wider Implications -- VIII. Conclusion -- 4. Abortion Law in Ireland: Reflecting on Reform -- I. Introduction -- II. A New Constitutional Landscape -- III. Political Change towards Constitutional Reform -- IV. A New Legislative Landscape -- V. Conclusion -- PART II: FAMILY AND RELATIONSHIPS -- 5. Mapping a Transformed Landscape: Sexual Orientation and the Law in Ireland -- I. Introduction -- II. Criminal Laws and the Path to Decriminalisation -- III. Equality and Non-discrimination -- IV. Relationship Recognition: Civil Partnership -- V. The Path to Equal Marriage -- VI. Unfinished Business?

While levels of public confidence in the police have declined internationally, the Republic of Ireland appears to have bucked this trend with confidence levels that remain 'strikingly and stubbornly high' ( Mulcahy, 2016: 275). This situation appears all the more puzzling given the wave of scandals to have hit the force in recent decades, ranging from police corruption in Donegal in the late 1990s to a more recent whistleblower scandal that has resulted in the resignation of a slew of Ministers and high-ranking officials. Such developments beg important questions as to the factors sustaining public confidence over this tumultuous period. Drawing on international and domestic data, this article aims to probe this 'paradox' of public confidence in the Irish police. It argues that, although confidence is high, there is more to the dynamics of confidence in the police in Ireland than this initial appraisal suggests. Indeed, it advances the Irish case as an illustration both of the dimensionality of the public confidence concept and the complexity of the pathways to trust in the police.

This volume contains an Open Access Chapter Leading scholars on Irish penal history and theory explore trends and debates that have surrounded patterns of punishment in Ireland since the formation of the State and foreground often absent perspectives in criminology and punishment.

The bulk of extant research on public opinion on crime and punishment is focused on Global North nations. This article contributes a new perspective to the literature on punitivism by examining public opinion on crime, punishment and the death penalty in Barbados. The article presents insights from exploratory focus group research conducted in Barbados in 2017. These findings are particularly relevant as Barbadian lawmakers navigate reform of the nation's death penalty law. While the focus groups reveal anxieties that echo those identified in other jurisdictions, related to nostalgia for the past and concern regarding social order for instance, they also demonstrate the specific relevance of time and place. Using approaches from Caribbean Criminology and drawing on post-colonial perspectives, the article examines the context of views on punishment in Barbados, including perceptions of 'neo-colonial' interference and concerns about what can be lost in the process of 'progress'.

This article explores the death penalty in Barbados. Drawing on the historical context and the punishment's colonial origins, we seek to make sense of its more recent history, particularly a 2018 landmark legal judgment that has finally forced reform of the sanction in Barbados. The article explores the bifurcated penological history of the death penalty; while laws enacted in London were extended to colonial nations such as Barbados, suggesting a continuation of norms, the tools of criminal justice were wielded for different purposes in the metropole compared with the periphery. We consider the trajectory of this colonial imposition and the retention of repressive punishments after independence, the Caribbean resistance to international abolitionist pressure from the 1990s and the recent reform. The role of the death penalty as a political and symbolic tool is examined, considering especially the colonial legacy of capital punishment in Barbados and the extent to which this factor has shaped contemporary public debates on punishment.