‘Imperfect Victims’ Documents Women Prosecuted for Self-Defense
Ladies who are suffering years of bodily violence lastly battle again, and wind up in jail. Rape victims jailed as “materials witnesses” to compel their testimony. Teenagers exploited by violent pimps who themselves get charged with intercourse trafficking. Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism is crammed with story after infuriating story of such conditions.
The e-book, from College of Maryland legislation professor Leigh Goodmark, takes an in depth have a look at how women and girls come to be arrested, prosecuted, and punished for such actions as defending themselves towards violence or refusing to take part within the prosecution of somebody who victimized them.
The roots of many such injustices, Goodmark explains, are mockingly present in insurance policies pushed by anti-violence advocates meant to assist survivors of spousal abuse, sexual violence, and different crimes that disproportionately have an effect on ladies. These carceral options have didn’t lower violence, however they’ve had “vital penalties for the victims of that violence,” writes Goodmark.
Her answer—”abolition feminism”—goals to maneuver “away from a mindset that equates punishment with justice.” In the end, it could contain abolishing prisons and defunding police. Goodmark’s finish objectives are exhausting to swallow: Like so many prison justice abolitionists, her options depend on a mixture of obscure and utopian visions (we’d like “a distinct world totally,” the place everybody’s wants are met and racism and patriarchy are dismantled) and ignoring the truth that materials situations cannot absolutely account for human passions and prejudices. Nor does she clarify how you can tackle ongoing violence from these proof against restorative justice.
However Goodmark additionally gives loads of much less radical concepts for motion. These embrace decriminalizing intercourse work, opposing “new prison legal guidelines that purport to make society safer whereas growing the attain of the carceral state,” repealing obligatory arrest legal guidelines for home violence conditions, and preventing for clemency for these unfairly imprisoned.
