Maureen Cain (born 1938) is a British criminologists and professor.
She received her bachelor's degree from London School of Economics in 1959, and she attained her PhD from the London School of Economics in 1969. After graduating from LSE, Cain became a professor.
Cain's three main teaching posts have been:
She has taught courses in Sociology of Law and Crime and Sociology of Law.
She was president of the British Society of Criminology from 2003 to 2006.[2]
Cain's interests have been as broad as looking and studying the major works of Marx & Engels "Sociology of Law" to looking into "Society and the Policeman's Role". Cain's more current teaching and research interests have come from her years in Trinidad teaching at The University of the West Indies. While in Trinidad she studied Women, Crime and Social Harms. Cain's original interest and her PhD dissertation was "Society and the Policeman's Role", which is noted for being ahead of its time in feminist criminology. Cain then moved away from criminology to look at "The main themes of Marx's and Engels' sociology of law" then she returned to a look into policing when she wrote "Racism, the police, and community policing: a comment on the Scarman Report”.[3] Cain then wrote “Orientalism, Occidentalism and the sociology of Crime” and today she is about to publish a new book called “Globality, Crime and Criminology” due to be available for sale 30 July 2010.[4]
Maureen Cain's biggest contribution to feminist criminology was her first contribution, “Society and the Policeman’s Role”. This has been noted as being “Ahead of its feminist time”. "Society and the Policeman's Role" is just one example of her contribution to feminist criminology and because of this initial and prolific contribution Maureen Cain can be considered a pioneer in the field of feminist criminology.[5]Cain also looks at women's issues in many of her articles of Transgressions in Criminology as she looks at the historical treatment of men vs women and she brings up many political questions as to the level of rights surrounding feminism.[6]