This volume in the Research Highlights series brings together contributions that together aim to elucidate the nature of women’s offending and responses to it. Such a volume was considered timely for a number of reasons. First, there continues to be a relative dearth of literature on women who offend and, in particular, on the effectiveness of responses that have been developed to meet offending women’s needs. At the same time as the ‘what works?’ literature claims to provide increasing insight into what constitutes effective intervention aimed at reducing reoffending, it is becoming increasingly apparent that women’s offending is in many ways distinctive and therefore demands a distinctive response.