Chapter 8, Gender-Based Abuse (GBA), is significantly reorganized and updated, introduces environmental criminology as it relates to feminist criminology, and addresses MMIWG as a GBA.
Chapter 9, Focusing on Sexual Abuse, is reorganized and updated and introduces a new figure on child sexual assault victims and perpetrators. It includes more on street sexual harassment and introduces the changes from Professor Anita Hill’s ordeal to the #MeToo movement and the significance of sexual abuse kits (SAKs). Anti-carceral feminists’ concerns with CLS responses are discussed, as is the extraordinarily high risk of sexual abuse victimization among trans women.
Chapter 10, Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA) and Stalking, introduces a new section on additional IPA tactics by perpetrators against immigrants, LGBTQI+ individuals, and people with disabilities. A new figure summarizes the ways that IPA is a GBA among different-sex couples. IPA against trans and intersex individuals is introduced, as is anti-carceral feminists’ movements toward more decriminalization of domestic violence.
Chapter 11, Women Working in Prisons and Jails, introduces how the growing visibility of nonbinary gender identities and rights should include women’s right to work in the CLS and summarizes recent research documenting sexism against women working in prisons and jails.
Chapter 12, Women Working in Policing and Law Enforcement, includes women’s continued poor representation and advancements in police work, and the hostile workplace that is still all too common. It introduces Workman-Stark’s (2017) five steps of police identity formation, the link between community-oriented policing and how women “do” policing, and transphobia in policing.
Chapter 13, Women Working in the Courts, similar to Chapters 11 and 12, documents the continued sexism faced by women working in the courts, particularly in law firms, particularly in terms of the introduced concept BigLaw. Women’s representation in law schools and as judges has improved.
Chapter 14, Effecting Change, introduces the ecological model of victimization, offending, and working in the CLS; new figures on transformative critical feminist criminology; the concepts of trauma-informed care and digital documenting; and a section on improving research methods and community-coordinated responses.
• About the Author •
Joanne BelknapProfessor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, received a PhD in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Michigan State University in 1986. She is both a Fellow and Past-President of the American Society of Criminology and has written numerous scholarly publications, most of which involve gender-based abuse and the connection between trauma and offending through an intersectional feminist lens. Dr. Belknap has secured almost 2 million dollars in grant money to conduct research on women, girls, and crime; served on state advisory boards for female offenders and women in prison; served on U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno’s Violence Against Women Committee; gave expert testimony to the Warren Christopher Commission investigating the Rodney King police brutality incident in Los Angeles; and taught college classes in women’s and men’s prisons through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. She has received numerous research, teaching, and service awards.
Part I Introduction
Chapter 1 Gendering Criminology Through an Intersectional Lens
1 Gendering Criminology Through an Intersectional Lens
The more stigmatized their social position, the easier it is to victimize them. The further a woman’s sexuality, age, class, criminal background, and race are from hegemonic norms, the more likely it is that they will be harmed—and the more likely that their harm will not be taken seriously by their community, by anti-violence programs, or by the general public.
—Richie (2012, pp. 15–16)
This book presents the current state of women, girls, gender, and justice, in criminology (the study of crime), focusing on the United States. To understand this requires two approaches. First, it is necessary to comprehend historical developments of the status of women and girls in the home, society, and the workplace. Second, sexism does not occur in a vacuum; rather it intersects with race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, immigration and nation status, and so on. Therefore, it is vital to use an intersectional approach to examine the impacts of gender (P. H. Collins & Bilge, 2016; Potter, 2015). To this end, this book includes relevant historical factors, many with lasting legacies, and addresses criminology through a gendered and intersectional lens.
In addition to reporting the challenging state of justice in the past and present United States, this book also identifies successes and progress in theories, research, policies, and practice. Given that a larger portion of this book is more about the injustice than justice experienced by crime victims, defendants/offenders, and workers, the term criminal legal system is used in lieu of what many people refer to as the criminal justice system. In sum, most of this book reports on the unjust processing of girl and women victims and defendants/offenders, and the challenges of women working in the criminal legal system as police, jail/prison staff, lawyers, and judges. However, advances in society, criminology, the criminal legal system, and justice will also be identified. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce readers to this book and to expose them to an overview of the important concepts and phenomena necessary to understand gender and crime. These significant concepts include a presentation of women and girls’ invisibility in criminology and criminal legal system studies and society, relevant concepts and definitions, and an understanding of how the images of women and girls in society have affected their experiences as victims, offenders, and professionals working in the criminal legal system.
The bulk of The Invisible Woman is the three sections between the first and last chapters: offending (Section II), victimization (Section III), and criminal legal system workers (Section IV). The offending section, Section II, includes chapters on criminology theories (Chapters 2 and 3), gender patterns in offending and being labeled “offender” (Chapter 4), gendered contexts in offending (Chapter 5), gender differences in how the criminal legal system (CLS) processes offenders (Chapter 6), and gender differences in punishing and incarcerating offenders (Chapter 7). Section III, the victim section, is on gender-based abuses. Gender-based abuses (GBAs) are abuses committed disproportionately against women, girls, queer (LGBTQI+) and gender-nonconforming individuals. Chapter 8 introduces GBAs, Chapter 9 focuses on sexual victimizations (e.g., rape and sexual harassment), and Chapter 10 is on intimate partner abuse (also known as intimate partner violence and “domestic violence”) and stalking. Section IV is on women workers in the criminal legal system (CLS), with chapters devoted specifically to jail/prison work (Chapter