Francesca Spina is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts. She has a PhD in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. One of her primary teaching and research interests is gender and the criminal justice system, on which she has published and presented extensively. Some of her recent works on this topic include "Gender and Crime" in the Oxford Bibliographies series and several book chapters on gender and crime, including "Marital Violence" and "National Sex Assault Awareness and Prevention Month" in Sexual Harassment and Misconduct: An Encyclopedia (Bloomsbury 2021), "Females and Law School" in The Encyclopedia of Women and Crime (2019), and "Italy" in Gender and Identity around the World (Bloomsbury 2020).