Women’s pathways to homicide offending in Uganda

According to the feminist pathways perspective, women’s offending behaviour is largely attributed to their experiences of victimisation at the hands of male friends and relatives. Though there is considerable research, especially in the United States where the perspective originated, women’s pathways to homicide offending in Uganda are not yet known. Moreso, studies on female adult-onset offenders are lacking. Therefore, to fill the identified gap, I conducted a qualitative study with 30 women convicted of murder and investigated their pathways to homicide offending. The study was guided by phenomenological research. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were used to collect data while data analysis was done with the help of NVivo 12 software. Consistent with Western literature, this study found that victimisation was majorly responsible for the offending behaviour of women. The study identified four types of women’s pathways to homicide offending which included; the intimate partner violence-related pathway, the protecting marriages and children pathway, the financial greed pathway and, the pathway to prison due to guilt of association with criminal intimate partners. However, intimate partner violence-related pathway was responsible for the offending behaviour of most of the women (N=20). Implications of this study for policymakers and practitioners in the criminal justice system are discussed.