This article is a practitioner’s response to Susan Batchelor’s article `”Prove me the bam!”: Victimization and agency in the lives of young women who commit violent offences’ published in the December 2005 edition of Probation Journal. Batchelor undertook a research study comprising in-depth oral-history interviews with 21 women convicted of violent offences aged between 16 and 24 years who were detained in HMPYOI Cornton Vale in Scotland, interviews with adults who work with `such young women’ (p. 361) and an analysis of available documents (such as relevant social work reports, prison narratives, programme records, etc). The focus of Batchelor’s article was to explore the background and characteristics of female offenders convicted of violent offences and to use this to develop a `what works’ discourse on how to respond to such behaviour.

This article is a practitioner’s response to Susan Batchelor’s article `Prove me the bam!’: Victimization and agency in the lives of young women who commit violent offences’, published in Probation Journal (December, 2005). The article drew on research Susan Batchelor had undertaken at HMPYOI Cornton Vale in Scotland with 21 young women aged from 16 to 24 years-old who were imprisoned for violent offences. Susan Batchelor’s findings challenge the notion that female violence is `abnormal’ or `bizarre’, suggesting instead that it is a rational response in lives characterized by multiple disadvantage.