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Available From UC Press
Can't Catch a Break
Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility
Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can’t Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality.
As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/.
As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/.
Susan Starr Sered is Professor of Sociology and Senior Researcher at the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University in Boston. She is the author of Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity. Read more about the women in Can't Catch a Break and Susan's research on her blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/.
Maureen Norton-Hawk is Professor of Sociology and Codirector of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Suffolk University in Boston. She has published widely in the field of women and prostitution.
Maureen Norton-Hawk is Professor of Sociology and Codirector of the Center for Crime and Justice Policy Research at Suffolk University in Boston. She has published widely in the field of women and prostitution.
"In Can’t Catch a Break Sered and Norton-Hawk offer the reader a vital glimpse into the chaotic, desperate, and depressing lives of the women that have been criminalized by our ill advised war on drugs. The number of women in prison, a third of whom are incarcerated for drug offenses, has increased eightfold since the eighties. Only rarely do those outside of the various systems that police the poor, get to see beyond the numbers appreciate the blending of health problems, homelessness, poverty and drug addiction that afflicts the lives women we spend billions to jail and imprison. The vivid portraits the authors paint are compelling, making us all ask, as the authors do, “have prisons become the way that America deals with suffering? A must read."
—Meda Chesney-Lind, Ph.D.,Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa
—Meda Chesney-Lind, Ph.D.,Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa