Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

by Leigh Goodmark

Overview

A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalized survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system.
 
Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of victims, particularly women of color and trans and gender-nonconforming people. Imperfect Victims argues that only dismantling the system will bring that punishment to an end. 
 
Amplifying the voices of survivors, including her own clients, abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark deftly guides readers on a step-by-step journey through the criminalization of survival. Abolition feminism reveals the possibility of a just world beyond the carceral state, which is fundamentally unable to respond to, let alone remedy, harm. As Imperfect Victims shows, abolition feminism is the only politics and practice that can undo the indescribable damage inflicted on survivors by the very system purporting to protect them.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520391123
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/31/2023
Series:	Gender and Justice , #8
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Leigh Goodmark is Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and the author of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence and A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

1. The Criminalization of Survival
2. Youth
3. Arrest and Prosecution
4. Punishment and Sentencing
5. Reconsideration and Clemency
6. Abolition Feminism

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

10/10/2022

Goodmark (Decriminalizing Domestic Violence), founder of the University of Maryland’s Gender Violence Clinic, spotlights in this disturbing study the ways in which the criminal justice system victimizes survivors of gender-based violence. According to Goodmark, the push in the 1980s and ’90s to increase enforcement of laws prohibiting gender-based violence cast women in the role of “imperfect victims” and encouraged “vengeful equity” arrests that treat women the same as men, despite evidence that “when do use violence, they do so in self-defense.” (In California, for example, women’s arrests increased by 400% after the passage of mandatory arrest laws for intimate partner violence.) Goodmark also documents police abuse of sex workers and victims of gender-based violence, and highlights prosecutors’ frequent use of material witness warrants to detain trafficked and abused women indefinitely to compel their testimony. According to Goodmark, criminal punishment of women who fight back against their abusers is unjustifiable on all four of its supposed grounds—rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence, and retribution—and leaves women with profound collateral harm, including difficulties finding housing and employment, even after their release from prison. Elsewhere, Goodmark cites evidence that diversion programs aimed at keeping girls out of the juvenile justice system are not equally available to Black youth. Throughout, Goodmark buttresses her call for an abolition feminism opposed to the carceral system with harrowing case studies and hard data. This provocation hits the mark. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 11/04/2022

There are women who suffer at the hands of domestic abusers, rapists, and traffickers until they snap and fight back, which often leads to their own arrest and conviction. That is especially true of abuse survivors who are women of color, trans, or gender nonconforming people, all deserving of civil rights and strong legal defenses like everyone else. Goodmark's (law, Univ. of Maryland; Decriminalizing Domestic Violence) latest book argues that the way to protect criminalized survivors is to dismantle the carceral system and consider problems and solutions from a social justice lens. This book tells the stories of women who survived domestic violence but did not receive fair treatment under the law. Readers will not have heard most of these stories on the news, but these women's voices are undeniably important and add depth to any discussion of the rights of those who have experienced domestic violence. VERDICT An essential read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the concept of abolition feminism and supports the rights of all survivors of domestic violence, regardless of their race or life circumstances.—Jennifer Moore

Library Journal