Date

5-3-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Among the homeless population in the United States and around the world, specific populations within the homeless experience unique challenges. As stated by Alatorre (2019), homeless women who have suffered trauma-related events are subject to revictimization when working to reintegrate back into society. The purpose of this chapter is to decipher the line between a victim and an offender in order to analyze how victimization and offending among women co-occur with homelessness. The study consists of a qualitative analysis of interviews, consisting of two YouTube videos from the channel White Under Belly and three interviews that were conducted via Zoom with graduates of Ozanam Manor, a mixed-gender homeless shelter located in Phoenix, Arizona. The life-course theory refers to influential life events, or transitions, that significantly affect an individual’s life trajectory and, ultimately, lead them to partake in criminal behavior. The feminization of poverty theory will be used to explain how women are particularly identified as vulnerable to poverty. The findings revealed that victimization was a significant factor that many of the women perceived led to their homelessness, and there is a difference among women who committed violent compared to nonviolent crimes (Roy et al., 2014). The goal of this study is to reveal the unequal representation of disparities that women continue to experience and ultimately challenge the cruel and misguided societal perceptions of those who experience homelessness.

Department

Criminal Justice

Thesis Comittee

Dr. Francisco Alatorre, Thesis Advisor
Dr. Jenny Olin Shanahan, Committee Member
Dr. Jamie Huff, Committee Member

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