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Carceral Feminism

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Overview

“Carceral Feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women. This stance does not acknowledge that police are often purveyors of violence and that prisons are always sites of violence. Carceral feminism ignores the ways in which race, class, gender identity, and immigration status leave certain women more vulnerable to violence and that greater criminalization often places these same women at risk of state violence.” – Victoria Law

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“Carceral Feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women. This stance does not acknowledge that police are often purveyors of violence and that prisons are always sites of violence. Carceral feminism ignores the ways in which race, class, gender identity, and immigration status leave certain women more vulnerable to violence and that greater criminalization often places these same women at risk of state violence.” – Victoria Law

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ARTICLES
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CURRICULUM
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Articles

A Reckoning Inside the Domestic-Violence Movement

By Zoë Carpenter Original article found here. Domestic abuse presents a deadly threat to millions of people across America. But as concerns about police misconduct

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Who Keeps Us Safe?

By Maia Hibbett Original article found here. A NEW YORK CITY MARCH descended upon a jail in mid-June, with protesters pumping fists and waving signs at

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Anti-Carceral Feminism

By Emily L. Thuma Original article found here. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs The “Free Joan Little” campaign became a coalitional space for Black liberation, feminist and prisoner

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How Police Became the Go-to Response to Domestic Violence

By Aya Gruber Original article found here. In response to widespread demands to “defund the police,” a specific question repeatedly crops up: “What about domestic

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WHAT FOLLOWS PUNISHMENT?

Original article found here. What Follows Punishment? Aviva Stahl When people convicted of sex offenses in the United States finish their criminal sentences, they generally

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How Feminists Resisted Prisons and Policing in the 1970s

Original article found here. How Feminists Resisted Prisons and Policing in the 1970s Emily L. Thuma Emily L. Thuma is an assistant professor of American

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Locking people up won’t help combat sexual violence

Original article found here. Locking people up won’t help combat sexual violence We need look beyond individual punishment to tackle a crisis which pervades the

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The political whiteness of #MeToo

Original article found here. The political whiteness of #MeToo We need to confront how the movement is shaped by the power of whiteness, write Alison

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How Anti-violence Activism Taught Me to Become a Prison Abolitionist

By Beth E. Richie Original article found here  Sometimes we learn our most profound political lessons in the contours of our everyday activism.  This is

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Heteropatriarchy Kills: Challenging Gender Violence in a Prison Nation

By Angela P. Harris Original article found here

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Disrupting the Relationship between the Anti-Violence Movement and the PIC

By Chez Rumpf | Chicago PIC Teaching Collective Original article found here Two weeks ago, more than 1200 people attended the National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) in

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Against Innocence: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Safety

By Jackie Wang Original article found here 

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Media

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Re-Imagining Our Legacy: Transforming from Criminalization to Liberation

By | Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance

This 2-part webinar series is inspired by a question posed by activist Mimi Kim: “Why and how did the violence against women movement - an emancipatory social movement - choose criminalization as a dominant strategy…and how has this focus on criminalization affected survivors?”
In this time of emergence, we are called to reflect on the status quo (“the way we’ve always done things”), to reimagine new possibilities that increase thriving, and shed that which no longer serves us. This webinar series will offer an opportunity to reflect on the movement to end gender-based violence’s reliance on the criminal legal system and contemplate the consequences of choosing policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as primary solutions to ending violence. We will discuss the impact of incarceration, discuss concepts of punishment and accountability (and how they differ), and learn about new, liberatory ways to practice accountability and repair that do not require punishment and incarceration.
We hope you will join us as we ponder these big questions and reimagine what is possible so that we can set our trajectory for a future in which we all get to flourish and be whole.
Each session is two-hours long, from 1pm to 3pm EST.
This webinar was recorded on 10/6/2020. The recording has been paused at points where music was playing. Please contact training@vsdvalliance.org for handouts, slides, and more information.
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Arrested Justice: Black Feminist Reflections on Carceral Feminism and Prison Abolition

By | IRAAS Annual Zora Neale Hurston Lecture 2016

Beth Richie, University of Illinois at Chicago Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Criminology, Law and Justice, and Sociology

Beth Richie is engaged in several research projects designed to explore the relationship between violence against women in low-income African American communities and violence. The specific focus of one study is girls who are both violent and perpetrators of violence. Another project is looking at the factors that influence recidivism and re-arrest rates for women and young people being released from a large urban jail. A third project is concerned with the public policy and social factors that lead to the rise in incarceration rates of women and conditions of confinement once they are sentenced. Currently Dr. Richie is leading a multi-million dollar research sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation researching women and youth issues at Rikers Island Correctional Facility. She was the recipient of three major awards: the National Advocacy Award by the Department of Health and Health and Human Services, Office of Violence Prevention; the Audre Lorde Legacy Award of the Union Institute stemming from her work with the National Network for Women in Prison; and the Visionary Award Of the Violence Intervention Project. Tags:abolition, carceral feminisms, Beth Richie
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Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons

By | Victoria Law

Activist and journalist Victoria Law is the author of "Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women" (PM Press, 2009). Law has previously been interviewed by Angola 3 News on two separate occasions. Our first interview focused on the torture of women prisoners in the US. The second interview looked at how the women's liberation movements of the 1970s advocated for the decriminalization of women's self defense. Taking this critique of the US criminal "justice" system one step further, Law presented a prison abolitionist critique of the how the mainstream women's movement, then and now, has embraced the same "justice" system as a vehicle for combating violence against women.

Tags: community based solutions, sexual ciolence, communities of color, victoria law
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More Laws = More Violence: Criminalization as a Failed Strategy for Anti-Violence Movements

By | Barnard Center for Research on Women

Featuring Angélica Cházaro, Shira Hassan, Soniya Munshi, Andrea Ritchie, Andrea Smith, and Dean Spade.

Tags:carceral feminisms, Andrea Ritchie
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Survived and Punished

By | Ny Nourn | TEDxPeacePlaza

A story of immigration, domestic violence, jail, deportation, and redemption. As a teenager, Ny Nourn became trapped in an abusive relationship with a much older man. Weeks after Ny turned 18, her boyfriend killed the boss at her after-school job in a fit of jealousy. The murder went unsolved for three years until Ny went to the police. After providing a confession, Ny was arrested and charged with aiding and abetting murder. A judge sentenced Ny to life without the possibility of parole.

Tags:carceral feminisms, Ny Nourn
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Queer Dreams and Nonprofit Blues: Lessons from Anti-Violence Movements

By | Dean Spade

Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, Gender and Law, Policing and Imprisonment, and Law and Social Movements. Prior to joining the faculty of Seattle University, Dean was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School.

Tags:Caradministrative violence, anti-capitalism, anti-violence, Barnard Center for Research on Women, bathrooms, Born in Flames, CeCe McDonald, Craig Willse, criminalization, Critical Race Theory, disability justice, hate crime laws, healthcare, Hope, immigration, intersectionality, interviews, law school, legal reform, marriage, Medicaid, medical industrial complex, military/war, mutual aid, neoliberalism, nonprofit industrial complex, nonprofits,Normal Life, Palestine, pinkwashing, police, poverty, prison abolition, public benefits, queer, racism, Reina Gossett, relationships, reviews, state violence, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, trans, wealth redistribution

Survival and Resistance: Women Organizing towards Abolition

By | Rustbelt Abolition Radio

In this episode we focus on the ways women are organizing against gendered violence and mass criminalization -- and for a world free of domination. We speak with Mariame Kaba, long-time abolitionist organizer and writer, about her work with groups like Survived and Punished and Project NIA, and the criminalization of women under capitalist heteropatriarchy. We also talk to Adrienne Skye-Roberts from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), on specific challenges faced by women behind bars. We close today’s show with the voices of two women from from CCWP’s multimedia project, A Living Chance: Storytelling to End Life without Parole. FeminismAbolitionGenderIncarcerationRacial CapitalismAnarchismMarxismRadicalBlack Lives Matter

Tags: carceral feminisms, Mariame Kaba

Transformative justice in an era of mass criminalization

By | Mariame Kaba and Victoria Law

March 14, 2019 On the twelfth episode of The Activist Files, Senior Legal Worker Leah Todd talks with educator, organizer, and director of Project NIA Mariame Kaba and journalist, author, and organizer Victoria Law about their work on issues of violence, incarceration, gender, criminalization, and transformative justice. Mariame and Victoria share the personal experiences that brought them to their social justice work. They discuss the cycles of violence created by carceral solutions to social problems, and talk about the growing phenomenon of mass criminalization, including how the term allows us to think beyond just the impacts of incarceration and see ways that surveillance and punishment affect people's lives even outside of prison walls. In a comment that may remind Activist Files listeners of our last episode, Victoria and Mariame discuss the ways that prisons and carceral solutions have "stripped away our imagination," providing a one-size-fits-all response to harm that often causes more harm without providing resolution, safety, or healing. This episode highlights the importance of thinking in new ways about healing and providing accountability for harm, which is explored in Mariame's project transformharm.org. Episode 12 of The Activist Files is vital listening for anyone interested in how to go beyond punishing harm, to healing from, being accountable for, and preventing it.

Tags: carceral feminisms, Mariame Kaba
Play Video

All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence

By | Critical Resistance
On June 18, 2019, Critical Resistance, The Center for Political Education (CPE), and California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) hosted an event featuring the author of All Our Trials, in conversation with Rachel Herzing of CPE and Diana Block of CCWP. The event was held at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics in San Francisco. All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (University of Illinois Press, 2019) traces the making of anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, prisoners’ and psychiatric patients’ rights, and gender and sexual liberation in the 1970's.
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Curriculum

Click Here to visit https://survivedandpunished.org/

New S&P Curriculum Unit for Domestic Violence Awareness Month

By | Survived and Punished (S & P)

Click Here to visit https://survivedandpunished.org/

Criminalizing Survival: A Resource of Curricula and Activities

By | Survived and Punished (S & P)

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Anti Violence and Prison Industrial Complex Timeline

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Anti Violence and Prison Industrial Complex Timeline

Workshop by | CARA / Communities Against Rape & Abuse

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Other Resources | Links

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Shifting from Carceral to Transformative Justice Feminisms

By | CarceralFeminism.wordpress.com



Tags: carceral feminisms, reading list
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Responding to Violence, Restoring Justice

By | Barnard Center for Research on Women

At a promising moment in the history of the feminist anti-violence movement, a number of activist organizations are carving new means to prevent violence out of broad visions of justice. This project offers profiles of some of these organizations, providing insight into their histories, visions, and organizing methods as well as information on past and present projects, interviews with organizers, and links to outside resources. For context, it also provides an overview of the history of the feminist anti-violence movement and some well-documented criticisms: namely, that it has focused on the role of gender to the detriment of other relevant factors, such as race and class, and that this has contributed to a harmful dependence on policing and incarceration. Operating with these criticisms in mind, the groups profiled here point to a broader paradigm shift occurring in anti-violence work that is revitalizing the movement. Community-based organizations not only provide culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate services, but are also working to build a more inclusive and rounded movement; in recent years, a number of grassroots organizing projects have sprung up that recognize the harms of policing and incarceration and seek to build alternatives based in community and social transformation – to prevent violence and promote justice.

Tags: carceral feminisms, reading list
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CONVERGE! Reimagining the Movement to End Gender Violence

By | University of Miami Race and Social Justice Law Review Website



Tags: carceral feminisms, community accountability, anti-violence
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Toward a Radical Imagination of Law

By | Amna Akbar

In this Article, I consider the contemporary law reform project of a radical social movement seeking to transform the state: specifically, the Movement for Black Lives policy platform, “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice.” The Movement for Black Lives is the leading example of a contemporary racial justice movement with an intersectional politics including feminist and anti-capitalist commitments. The visions of such radical social movements offer an alternative epistemology for understanding and addressing structural inequality and injustice. By studying not only the critiques offered by radical social movements, but also their visions for transformative change, the edges of law scholarship can be expanded, a deeper set of critiques and a longer set of histories—of colonialism and settler colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and mass incarceration—centered, and a bolder project of transformation forwarded. These visions should push legal scholars toward a broader frame for understanding how law, the market, and the state co-produce intersectional structural inequality, and toward agendas that focus not on building the power of law and law enforcement, but on transforming the state and society and building the power of marginalized communities. This shift would invigorate the social movements literature and bring new energy to scholarship on substantive areas of law, from criminal and immigration law to property and contract law.

Tags: legal scholarship, movement for black lives, policy, settler colonialism, slave codes, building power
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No Selves to Defend

By | Mariame Kaba

This site created by Mariame Kaba offers resources for people who want to run book and poetry discussion groups about survivors of violence who are criminalized for self-defense and survival.
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Against Equality

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Against Equality

By | Dean Spade

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Captive Genders

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Captive Genders

By | Eric Stanley & Nat Smith intro by Dean Spade

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