Accounts of female offenders’ journeys into the criminal justice system are often silenced or marginalized.
Featuring a Foreword from Pat Carlen and inspired by her seminal book ‘Criminal Women’, this collection uses participatory, inclusive and narrative methodologies to highlight the lived experiences of women involved with the criminal justice system. It presents studies focused on drug use and supply, sex work, sexual exploitation and experiences of imprisonment.
Bringing together cutting-edge feminist research, this book exposes the intersecting oppressions and social control often central to women’s experiences of the justice system and offers invaluable insights for developing penal policies that account for the needs of women.
– imprisonment. 192 Women and criminal justice In 2012, the Prison Reform Trust published a three-year strategy to reduce the imprisonment of women in the UK (Prison Reform Trust, 2012a) and, in June 2014, again called for a reduction in women’s imprisonment (Prison Reform Trust, 2014). In Scotland, similar calls were made (Burman, 2012; Scottish Commission, 2012), and Clinks published a similar message calling for a gender-responsive approach to sentencing (Clinks, 2012). The Howard League for Penal Reform has worked since the 1990s to reform penal policy for women
This insightful book focuses on developments since the publication in 2007 of the Corston Report into women and criminal justice. While some of its recommendations were accepted by government, actual policy has restricted the scale and scope of change.
The challenges of working with women in the current climate of change and uncertainty are also explored, seeking to translate lessons from good practice to policy development and recommending future directions resulting from the coalition government’s Transforming Rehabilitation plans. This timely analysis engages with wide-ranging considerations for policy makers, providers and practitioners of services and interventions for women who offend, and questions whether women should be treated differently in the criminal justice system.
From the denial of abortion rights in Ireland to sexual violence against British South Asian women in England, the state and its institutions continue to fail women. This book offers a counter narrative to contemporary injustices and a persistent culture of victim-blaming.
The academic and activist contributions to this collection explore contemporary research areas and pursue new discursive directions in order to present a feminist criminology, built on feminist praxis, for the twenty-first century.
Providing a direct challenge to regressive and ineffective theory, policy and practice, this book resists the politics of gendered victimisation through extending feminist analyses of the state and documenting interventions into contemporary injustices.
Drawing on original research from the Women, Family, Crime and Justice research network, this edited collection sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the criminal justice system in the UK.
Each contribution demonstrates how these groups are often ignored, oppressed and repeatedly victimised. The book addresses crucial issues including short-term imprisonment, trauma-specific interventions, schools supporting children affected by parental imprisonment and visibility and voice in research.
Bringing together contemporary knowledge from both research and practice, this ambitious volume offers valuable insights and practical recommendations for positive action and change.
Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support.
A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS.
Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is the first to examine how female drug user’s identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. It analyses how the subjectivities ascribed to women users within drug policy sustain them in their problematic use and reinforce their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, the book calls for the formulation of drug policies to be based on gender equity and social justice. It will appeal to academics in the social sciences, practitioners and policy makers.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is the first to examine how female drug user’s identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. It analyses how the subjectivities ascribed to women users within drug policy sustain them in their problematic use and reinforce their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, the book calls for the formulation of drug policies to be based on gender equity and social justice. It will appeal to academics in the social sciences, practitioners and policy makers.
Understanding prisons and the policies surrounding them is of fundamental importance to students and practitioners of criminology and related fields. This concise and accessible guide offers a compendium of key information, theories, concepts, research and policy, presenting a rounded and critical overview of the prison system in England and Wales.
Covering the historical and contemporary context of prisons, the text guides the reader through prison life as experienced by different groups such as women, the work of prison officers and a tour of international prisons.
Each chapter features key learning items:
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an overview and summary;
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learning outcomes;
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end of chapter questions;
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definitions of key terms and concepts;
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examples and illustrative case studies;
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summary boxes of key research studies and further reading.
Focusing on the experiences of stakeholder groups and the themes of power, legitimacy and rehabilitation, the book concludes with an overview of the future challenges for prisons.
Indigenous Criminology is the first book to comprehensively explore Indigenous people’s contact with criminal justice systems in a contemporary and historical context. Drawing on comparative Indigenous material from North America, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, it addresses both the theoretical underpinnings to the development of a specific Indigenous criminology, and canvasses the broader policy and practice implications for criminal justice.
Written by leading criminologists specialising in Indigenous justice issues, the book argues for the importance of Indigenous knowledges and methodologies to criminology, and suggests that colonialism needs to be a fundamental concept to criminology in order to understand contemporary problems such as deaths in custody, high imprisonment rates, police brutality and the high levels of violence in some Indigenous communities.
Prioritising the voices of Indigenous peoples, the work will make a significant contribution to the development of a decolonising criminology and will be of wide interest.
