Not so Notorious: Crimes Committed by Bahraini Women in the Kingdom of Bahrain

A notorious female criminal captures the public s attention. She is discussed over tea and coffee, and is the subject of editorials and letters in the local press. The serious nature of criminal behavior shocks and – for better or worse – simultaneously fascinates and entertains. As psychologist Jack Katz has suggested, consumption of crime-related media acts as a “ritual moral exercise” in which people work out their own moral issues vicariously. From this phenomenological perspective, news reports of crime become sites in public life where the moral meaning of crime and punishment is created, consumed, and recreated. In a country with a low crime rate relative to other developing nations, female offenders are rare in Bahrain. In the last two decades only one Bahraini female was ever convicted of pre-meditated murder. Female criminals in Bahrain are overwhelmingly from other countries and are largely non-Arab. According to statistics from the women s prison in Isa Town, Bahrain, less than 5% of women detained in 2004 were Bahraini nationals, and less than 10% hailed from Bahrain or another Arab country