This obituary was written by Maureen Norton-Hawk and Susan Sered, co-authors of Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility, and originally posted here. “The tough-looking blonde over there,” is how Darlene was described to us nearly fifteen years ago when we ...
By Sarah Hupp Williamson, author of Criminology Explains Human TraffickingJuly 30th is the UN-recognized World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, while January 11th is the US-recognized National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Both days center on bringing attention and education to the public abou...
By Grace Howard, author of The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood
When I say that the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses are legal persons, many people may assume I’m talking about the recent opinion that stated embryos created ...
Gun Present takes us inside the everyday operations of the law at a courthouse in the Deep South. Illuminating the challenges accompanying the prosecution of criminal cases involving guns, the three coauthors—an anthropologist, a geographer, and a district attorney—present a deeply hum...
By Jeffrey S. Adler, author of Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality
The horrific recent murders of Tyre Nichols, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and many other African American citizens have brought ...
By Rebecca Sharpless, author of Shackled: 92 Refugees Imprisoned on ICE Air
My new book Shackled recounts the harrowing real-life experiences of 92 individuals abused during a failed deportation flight to Somalia. Through the eyes of Sa’id Janale and Abdulahi Hassan, the book exposes t...
by Cesraéa Rumpf, author of Recovering Identity: Criminalized Women’s Fight for Dignity and Freedom
When I began my research with formerly incarcerated women in Chicago, I expected to hear a lot of hard stories. Based on the existing research, my past direct service work in domestic vi...
Stories of teen sexting scandals, cyberbullying, and image-based sexual abuse have become commonplace fixtures of the digital age, with many adults struggling to identify ways to monitor young people’s digital engagement. In When Rape Goes Viral, Anna Gjika argues that rather than focusin...
By Francine Banner, author of Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems
What does it mean to be complicit?
This question is at the heart of my book, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems.
My interest in the topic stems from years of pra...
In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid account of religious life within an institution designed to punish. Rachel Ellis conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women’s prison, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and volunteers. Through their s...