criminal justice system

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

brittany — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kay Whitlock, Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie

In their near-exhaustive catalogue of violence, discrimination, and systematic abuse of LGBT people in the United States, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock outline the specific ways that the criminalization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people has perpetuated inequalities not only based on sexual identity but also within the complex interplay of race, class, and gender. While many leading texts in LGBT studies have argued that the policing of gender leads to toxic consequences for all members of society, this book reveals just how pervasive such policing of gender is and just how complicit we are in maintaining these systems of inequality. Most centrally, Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock argue that decriminalizing queerness has been sidelined by efforts to merely remove legal sanctions—a problem that fails to address the basic assumptions of queer deviance at play in our legal system.

Queer (In)Justice dispenses a legal history of LGBT oppression that spans hundreds of years, beginning with a sweeping review of the history of gender policing—indigenous abuse, constructions of African people as hypersexual, “contaminating” immigrant bodies, and even Biblical ideas about sodomy—and moving through a range of topics that collectively provide the most complete picture of LGBT criminalization I have ever encountered. Addressing queer criminal archetypes (e.g., the queer killer, sexually degraded predator, disease spreader, and queer security threat) early in the book, the authors then move to three stellar chapters on legal policing of gender in clubs and public spaces, courtroom battles about queer identity (where gender bending and violence are discursively linked), and, finally, the queering of prisons. This last chapter on prisons provides a haunting account of prison guards ignoring sexual identity-based violence, refusing care for HIV/AIDS prisoners, and constructing queer inmates as perverse. The authors conclude (in one of only a few hopeful moments of the book) that anti-police-brutality, the building of safe communities, prison solidarity, and community organizing must occur in order to tease apart the conflation of queerness and criminality.

At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities. The authors argue, essentially, that cases like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena are not isolated incidents of violent, hateful oppression, but rather, engendered by the very system that supposedly protects queer subjects. From senseless police brutality to justifying death penalty sentences based on sexual identity, from the fetishization of “lesbian killer” Aileen Wuornos to prison guards who allow continued sexual assault against “willing” gay men in prison, hatred of queerness exists at the heart of our criminal justice system. The question becomes: What legal, discursive, social, and institutional changes can we enact that more radically and permanently divides queerness from criminality? What stories must we tell (or learn) to communicate and understand the histories of violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people have endured? And, finally, what kind of queer justice should we seek?

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 12th 2011

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Piper Kerman

Spiegel & Grau

Piper Kerman recounts the nightmare that is the judicial system in her memoir Orange Is the New Black. This is a gentle introduction to life behind bars compared to the stories of other less fortunate prisoners. Kerman spent one year of her life in a minimum-security federal women's prison in Connecticut for money laundering. Surprisingly, the worst events didn't even happen within the prison itself. She was indicted on a minor drug charge committed ten years prior; she then had to wait another five years to even be sentenced.

Her jail experience wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, though it was no vacation. Piper was subjected to humiliating strip searches, strict rules, nonsensical regulations, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment by her boss while she was working hard as a prison electrician. She later had to finish her yearlong sentence by traveling via the notorious Con Air, and staying at other worse prisons in order to testify. On the (very slim) bright side, she learned vital life lessons from other prisoners. Kerman recalls these women and her friendships with them through tender sentimentality and brutally succinct detail.

I felt very touched by the solidarity of prisoners, as well as the descriptions of holidays and birthdays spent in prison. The women found joy doing one another's hair and nails. They also enjoyed craft projects, such as tailoring their prison uniforms, creating blankets for family, and (on one funny occasion) a crocheted yarn replica of a penis as a gag gift for another prisoner. They also cooked with the few resources they had, and a recipe for Prison Cheesecake is included in the book.

Most importantly, the author owns up to her own personal privilege. Piper is a self-described "blond-haired, blue-eyed, bohemian WASP," and a Smith College graduate. She realizes how infuriating the treatment from the system was for her, and how it wasted years of her life. However, she often proclaims how much worse it would have been if she were not a privileged white person with a private lawyer. She feels for her fellow prisoners, most of whom face dismal options and impossible challenges. Prison does little to educate offenders of their crimes and does not prepare them for the outside world once they are finally released.

In reality, prison does little to rehabilitate those who commit non-violent crimes, and there seems to be little distinction between the treatment of non-violent and violent offenders. In this memoir, it is noted that the minimum and maximum security prisons were within close proximity of each other and often traded inmates back and forth. I agree with Kerman that those who commit non-violent crimes would be better remedied, and more beneficial to the community, if they were ordered to do multiple years of community service instead of traumatic and expensive ($30,000 per year per inmate) prison time.

Orange Is the New Black is engaging, educational, moving, irritating, funny, morose, and extremely hard to put down.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, May 4th 2010

Girl Trouble

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Directed by Lexi Leban, Lidia Szajko

New Day Films

Girl Trouble gives a glimpse of the underbelly of The City By the Bay. Set in San Francisco, this is not a story about the hippies of Haight Asbury, nor is it a tale of the modern liberal Mecca so many of us assume it to be. In fact, Girl Trouble could be set just about anywhere in the United States. The film follows three young women whose lives are entrenched in cycles of violence and who can barely keep their heads above water, let alone enjoy the splendors of the world around them. One attorney in the film explained it perfectly: "These girls live in a city where, from any point, the ocean is no more than seven miles away, yet they have never seen it."

Spanning four years, examining the ins and outs of the juvenile justice system, the audience follows Stephanie, a new mother battling domestic violence; Sheila, a drug user and dealer who comes from a family riddled with violence and addiction; and Shangra, who sells drugs to support her homeless mother. The girls are tied together by their mutual experience working at the Center for Young Women’s Development. The Center’s mission is to “empower and inspire young women who have been involved in the juvenile justice system and/or the underground street economy to create positive change in their lives and communities.” The three girls, to varying degrees and at very different stages, all eventually do make positive change in their lives. We see the continuum of that potential change amongst them with one essentially submitting to fate, one petrified but embracing recovery, and one starting her life anew.

Girl Trouble makes a clear case for the benefits of intervention in individual lives over prosecution, and highlights discrepancies within the system. According to the film, girls make up twenty-three percent of juveniles in the system nationwide, and less than five percent of the funding goes towards programming for young women, the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice system. Stuck in the cycle of violence, girls can end up bouncing from group homes to survival crimes and back again. The film shows how people need a second chance to see that another path is possible and that jail does not provide girls with rehabilitative opportunities.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, April 7th 2010

Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:01:00 +0000

By Jane B. Sprott, Anthony N. Doob

University of Chicago Press

In Justice for Girls?, Canadian researchers Jane B. Sprott and Anthony N. Doob provide a comprehensive and concise overview on girls and juvenile delinquency in these two North American countries. Sprott and Doob address the misconception, fueled by media reports and newspaper articles circulating in the U.S. and Canada, that girls are committing more crimes, and more violent crimes. The book asserts that contrary to popular belief, “the violent girl crime wave that people have been waiting for since the early 1900s...has simply not happened.”

In uncovering the hype behind sensationalized reports on girls and violence, the authors view juvenile delinquency as a social construction. In researching the number of violent girl crimes throughout the twentieth century, they assert that girls are less likely to commit violent crimes than boys. However, they note that girls make up a large percentage of juvenile delinquents and custody cases due to status offenses, so-called crimes in which girls can be arrested and tried for non-criminal behavior, such as sexual immorality.

Connecting the courts' motivations behind status offenses to women’s political movements, the authors make a convincing argument that girls have often born the brunt of a sociopolitical backlash as a parallel when women's movements are afoot.At these pivotal moments in history, juvenile court systems have tightened their surveillance of girls’ behaviors and criminalized girls’ sexual expression. As a result, Sprott and Doob argue, girls have historically been punished, and continue to be punished, for behavior and actions considered normal and acceptable for boys.

The authors discuss the limitations of their research, acknowledging the absences in their data with regards to race and class. Another absence in the book is a discussion of queer girls as well as trans girls and boys. Since sexual immortality—one of the most common status offenses girls are cited for—is not discussed at length, it is unclear if any of the girls convicted of this offense were/are queer or trans, and how their sexuality and/or gender identity influenced a court’s decision. Moreover, besides examining one case study, the authors do not offer girls’ own voices or their stories. Instead, they allow statistical evidence to speak for the injustices girls face in juvenile justice systems.

As a feminist scholar interested in the intersection of girls’ studies and media studies, I would argue that Sprott's and Doob’s work could benefit any researcher addressing the current hype surrounding girls and violence in contemporary Western societies.

Written by: Kristen Lambert, March 20th 2010

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall: Fixing a Failing System

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:01:00 +0000

By John Aarons, Lisa Smith, Linda Wagner

Penguin Books

As depressing as they can often be, I’m generally interested in books on social justice issues. It’s essential to know the facts about issues before getting into a spirited debate about them. As an Urban Studies grad student, I’m especially interested in books on social justice as academic material, particularly ones on youth issues. Dispatches from Juvenile Hall engaged both the generally interest and the academically-minded parts of my brain—and it is a great read from either perspective.

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall gains most of its power from the narratives, which are told by their subjects in first person style with brief introductions and conclusions by the authors. We hear from the very people whose lives are most affected by the juvenile justice system: people who are still in the system and those who have been released who are willing to share their stories, as well as those who have spent their lives trying to help those on the inside. The authors, who have decades of experience in youth services work, present the narratives with little embellishment, which works well and are very effective. For someone who has never had firsthand experience with juvenile detention, their words are often brutal and shocking.

Jasmine, the subject of the book’s opening narrative, began using meth when she was eleven years old. A pattern of drug use, incarceration, and running away from home began from there. Michael, now a tattoo artist in South Carolina, was kicked out of his home at sixteen because his mother felt he was old enough to be a man. As a homeless teen, police generally ignored him, until he was apprehended for felony stealing. Stephanie, a high school guidance counselor and former juvenile probation officer, tells stories about the at-risk youth she worked with in both jobs, and stresses the importance of early detection of warning signs that a teen is in trouble.

Dispatches from Juvenile Hall isn’t just a collection of personal stories; there is also a section on how the system can be fixed. It includes a fascinating (if brief) history of juvenile justice in the United States and an analysis of what the authors believe does and does not work when working with juvenile offenders. Clearly, given the rates of juvenile incarceration, the hard-on-crime position currently taken by the juvenile justice system doesn’t deter crime. This is not to say the authors suggest being “soft” on crime; in fact, they argue it’s better to be “smart on crime.”

The authors suggest a blend of corrections reforms—like separating low-, medium-, and high-risk offenders and using cognitive behavioral strategies and gender-specific services—and rehabilitative treatments, and suggest that there can (and should) be a lively, fact-based debate about the United States’ attitude toward juvenile justice. Dispatches from Juvenile Hall is a thoughtful, intelligent, affecting piece of that debate.

Written by: Dana Reinoos, November 29th 2009

Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives

admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:27:00 +0000

By Marilee Strong

Jossey-Bass

When a crime is committed, the public wants to know why. In Erased, journalist Marilee Strong answers that question for a specific set of criminals she calls “eraser killers.” She outlines an in-depth profile of these killers hoping that the more the public knows about them, the more they will be caught and justice will be brought to their victims.

Strong started the journey to Erased while reporting on the disappearance of a pregnant woman in California named Laci Peterson. She covered Laci’s story through her disappearance to the conviction of her husband, Scott, for her murder and the murder of their unborn child. While researching other murders for the Peterson case, Strong noticed a psychological pattern between Scott and another killer who committed a strikingly similar crime more than fifty years earlier. This book is the result of the next five years of Strong’s research.

Erased covers more than fifty murders throughout the past century that fit the pattern of eraser killings, a form of intimate partner homicide that is committed almost exclusively by men, done in a carefully planned manner, which is often through bloodless means, in order to leave behind as little evidence as possible. The killers frame the murder to make it look like something happened that had nothing to do with them, and often try to make the body physically disappear as well. Eraser killers eliminate women, and sometimes children, in their lives simply because they no longer serve any purpose to them. The killers have no emotional attachment to their victims, considering them nothing more than a commodity. Most disturbingly, these men are often described as loving husbands right up until they day they kill. The women in their lives have no idea they are in danger until it is too late.

Strong credits the “unique psychology of men” with these murders and, in particular, a set of dangerous traits that psychologists have named the “Dark Triad” of personality: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. These traits lead eraser killers to believe they can literally get away with murder without anyone ever knowing. Ironically, it is also these traits that lead many to their downfall. Eraser killers can be so over confident that they make mistakes and overlook important details.

While it is interesting to know just where some of these killers went wrong, Strong occasionally takes those details too far. Her recounting of Laci Peterson’s murder becomes eerie when Strong describes exactly what Scott might have done to get away with it. Surprisingly, she goes into these specifics after telling the reader that many of these killers learn from each other as models, noting what worked for other killers and what pitfalls to avoid. With this in mind, many of the details Strong uses in Erased become uncomfortable to read. It makes one wonder how helpful the book is in bringing victims justice, and how helpful it could potentially be to a future eraser killer.

While Erased is disturbing on many levels, it is also thought provoking. For the majority of the book, Strong’s heart seems to be in the right place. In the conclusion, she offers recommendations on what the criminal justice system can do to better catch eraser killers. She focuses on closing loopholes that make eraser killers think they can get away with murder and that allow some of them to do just that. At the very least, Erased is a wake-up call that there is another, more disturbing, side to domestic homicide that deserves serious attention. Strong makes a very clear case that her profile and recommendations are worth considering.

Written by: Jill Hindenach, July 25th 2009

American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:06:00 +0000

By Sasha Abramsky

Beacon Press

"When the annals of our era are written, the United States will… come to be defined as a prison state." Not to spoil the ending, but this is the last, haunting sentence of American Furies, Sasha Abramsky's scathing indictment of the U.S. prison system. If you still believe that America is a just democracy where everyone is treated equal, then you really have to read this book. I found myself laughing aloud in sour irony recently as President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison term because he felt that the thirty month sentence was "excessive." Tell that to Dan Johnson, an inmate that Abramsky profiles who is currently serving a twenty-eight years to life sentence for possession of a small amount of cocaine, his "third strike" drug offense in California.

I worked in womens' prisons and juvenile corrections institutions for six years and still found my jaw dropping at the absurdities and horrors described in this nightmare of a book. Whether describing female chain gangs in Arizona, the capitalistic rise of private prisons or the inhuman and torturous conditions in maximum security units, Abramsky conjures the human stories behind the headlines. He contextualizes the present prison crisis by outlining the history of incarceration in the U.S., beginning with the 18th century's silent prisons, through the rehabilitation movements of the 1960s and '70s and then the tough-on-crime backlash of the 1980s through today.

His statistics are damning: In some communities, more young men go to prison than go to college; the U.S. spends more money on criminal justice than on higher education; the U.S. incarcerates more people than any other industrialized nation; and on and on. He parallels political movements and social trends with the rise of the pro-prison "business," and tracks the "victim's rights" campaigns and their harsh effects on sentencing. Though a comprehensive whirlwind of stories, statistics and interviews, at under 200 pages, I felt that he left out some crucial feminist issues, such as the rise in female inmates, particularly girls, and the effects of parents' incarceration on children.

But don't dismiss this book as just another scathing rant about how screwed up the system is. Abramsky knows how to write a story and his imagery, intellect, passion and anger bleed through each chapter. I kept naively waiting, though, for that magic finale where he offers hope and solutions for our nation's violently oppressive present situation. Though it's no happy-ending fairy tale, _American Furies _serves as a fierce warning of the self-perpetuating cycle of violence we ascribe to if we continue to let prisons replace schools as the incubators for our future.

Written by: Dana Edell, July 31st 2007

Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman’s Harrowing Quest for Justice

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:57:00 +0000

By Bill Lueders

University of Wisconsin Press

Justice and rape have a horrible history of rarely being bedfellows. This is one of the best chronicles of how torturous the justice system can be to women who have been forced into sexual acts against their will. Equally inspiring is the fact that it was written by a man, Bill Lueders, who is a news editor for Isthmus, Madison, Wisconsin's newsweekly. He does a great job of telling Patty’s incredible and moving story taking the reader on a step-by-step journey from the rape through the medical examinations, police investigation and interrogation, and the aftermath of the trial.

Typical of systems built on money rather than justice, offensively insensitive tactics that were intimidating and disrespectful were used with unrepentant fervor. Somewhere along the line “innocent until proven guilty” turned into “innocent by shifting blame to the victim.” You will read about the damaging, emotional wounds Patty held in this revealing expose of our justice system, and how her struggle with depression that resulted from the rape was difficult to reconcile when she had to continually defend herself. Not only is this book worth buying; it is also worth reading several times.

Written by: Teri King, March 14th 2007