Chicana Lives And Criminal Justice

This first comprehensive study of Chicanas encountering the U.S. criminal justice system is set within the context of the international war on drugs as witnessed at street level in Chicana/o barrios. Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice uses oral history to chronicle the lives of twenty-four Chicana pintas (prisoners/former prisoners) repeatedly arrested and incarcerated for non-violent, low-level economic and drug-related crimes. It also provides the first documentation of the thirty-four-year history of Sybil Brand Institute, Los Angeles' former women's jail. In a time and place where drug war policies target people of color and their communities, drug-addicted Chicanas are caught up in an endless cycle of police abuse, arrest, and incarceration. They feel the impact of mandatory sentencing laws, failing social services and endemic poverty, violence, racism, and gender discrimination. The women in this book frankly discuss not only their jail experiences, but also their family histories, involvement with gangs, addiction to drugs, encounters with the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, and their successful and unsuccessful attempts to recover from addiction and reconstitute fractured families. The Chicanas' stories underscore the amazing resilience and determination that have allowed many of the women to break the cycle of abuse. Díaz-Cotto also makes policy recommendations for those who come in contact with Chicanas/Latinas caught in the criminal justice system.

This unique compilation of essays and entries provides critical insights into the Latino/a experience with the U.S. criminal justice system. Concerns about immigration's relationship to crime make accurate information and critical analysis of the utmost importance. Latinos and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia promotes understanding of Latinas and Latinos and the U.S. criminal justice system, at the same time dispelling popular misconceptions about this population and criminal activity in the United States. Unlike a traditional encyclopedia comprised solely of A–Z entries, this work consists of two parts. Part I offers detailed essays on particularly important topics. Part II provides brief, A–Z entries. Topics are crossreferenced to enable easy research. Among the wide range of topics covered are policing and police misconduct, incarceration, the war on drugs, gangs, border crime, and racial profiling. Historically important issues and events relative to the Latino experience of criminal justice in the United States are also included, as are key legal cases.

How Latina girls and women become entangled in the criminal justice system Despite representing roughly 16 percent of incarcerated women, Latina women and girls are often rendered invisible in accounts of American crime and punishment. In Latinas in the Criminal Justice System, Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko bring together a group of distinguished scholars to provide a more complete, nuanced picture of Latinas as victims, offenders, and targets of deportation. Featuring Cecilia Menjívar, Lisa M. Martinez, Alice Cepeda, and others, this volume examines the complex histories, backgrounds, and struggles of Latinas in the criminal justice system. Contributors show us how Latinas encounter a variety of justice systems, including juvenile detention, adult court and corrections, and immigration and customs enforcement. Topics include Latina victims of crime and their perceptions of police officers; the impact of the US “crimmigration” system on undocumented Latina women; and help-seeking among Latina victims of intimate partner violence. Additionally, key chapters highlight the emergence of legal reforms, community mobilization efforts, and gender-sensitive alternatives to incarceration designed to increase equitable outcomes. Lopez and Pasko broaden our understanding of how gender, ethnicity, and legal status uniquely shape the experiences of system-impacted Latina girls and women. Latinas in the Criminal Justice System is a timely and much-needed resource for academics, activists, and policymakers.

Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.

The goal of this book is to examine the ethnic experience of the Mexican American community in the United States, from colonialism to twenty-first century globalization. The authors unearth evidence that reveals how historically white ideology, combined with science, law, and the American imagination, has been strategically used as a mechanism to intimidate, manipulate, oppress, control, dominate, and silence Mexican Americans, ethnic racial minorities, and poor whites. A theoretical and philosophical overview is presented, focusing on the repressive practice against Mexicans that resulted in violence, brutality, vigilantism, executions, and mass expulsions. The Mexican experience under “hooded” America is explored, including religion, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Local, state, and federal laws are documented, often in conflict with one another, including the Homeland Security program that continues to result in detentions and deportations. The authors examine the continuing argument of citizenship that has been used to legally exclude Mexican children from the educational system and thereby being characterized as not fit for the classroom nor entitled to an equitable education. Segregation and integration in the classroom is discussed, featuring examples of court cases. As documented throughout the book, American law is a constant reminder of the pervasive ideology of the historical racial supremacy, socially defined and enforced ethnic inferiority, and the rejection of positive social change, equality, and justice that continues to persist in the United States. The book is extensively referenced and is intended for professionals in the fields of sociology, history, ethnic studies, Mexican American (Chicano) studies, law and political science and also those concerned with sociolegal issues. Description Here

Drawing on government data and interdisciplinary expertise, this timely book seeks to explain why the changing economic and legal status of women has not reduced the gender gap in criminal offending. Women and Crime: A Reference Handbook examines how women's patterns of offending have changed over time in America, from the Colonial period to the present. The book sets the stage with a historical overview of women's criminal activity. Subsequent chapters cover such topics as changes in women's status and patterns of offending; the impact of childhood abuse on the development of criminality; and how changes in law, the War on Drugs, and other crime policy have, in fact, increased the frequency of women's imprisonment and arrests. International issues, such as legalization of prostitution, sex trafficking, and women's involvement in organized crime, including drug cartels, are also explored. Each chapter examines theory, research, law, policy, and key players in the evolving response to women's crime patterns. Throughout the work, the author links women's status, victimization, and offending patterns, and suggests how crime control policy, far from saving women, is increasingly making it impossible for female offenders to live on the outside.

This book addresses the complex issue of incarceration of Latino/as and offers a comprehensive overview of such topics as deportations in historical context, a case study of latino/a resistance to prisons in the 70s, the issues of youth and and girls prisons, and the post incarceration experience.

Complicated Lives focuses on the lives of sixty-five drug-using girls in the juvenile justice system (living in group homes, a residential treatment center, and a youth correctional facility) who grew up in families characterized by parental drug use, violence, and child maltreatment. Vera Lopez situates girls’ relationships with parents who fail to live up to idealized parenting norms and examines how these relationships change over time, and ultimately contribute to the girls’ future drug use and involvement in the justice system. While Lopez’s subjects express concerns and doubt in their chances for success, Lopez provides an optimistic prescription for reform and improvement of the lives of these young women and presents a number of suggestions ranging from enhanced cultural competency training for all juvenile justice professionals to developing stronger collaborations between youth and adult serving systems and agencies.