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Carceral feminism and Sexual Violence

According to the ACLU “79% of women in federal and state prisons reported physical abuse and over 60% reported past sexual abuse”, and furthermore, “As many as 90% of the women in prison today for killing men had previously been battered by those men”. This means that many of the women who are in prison are victims of sexual violence who may have committed the crimes that they were indicted for as a result of the sexual violence they experienced. The anti-carceral feminist movement pushes towards solving this issue and fighting the criminalization and incarceration of women who are victims of sexual and domestic violence.

An initiative created to help illuminate and help these injustices is the Survived and Punished Organization which began in 2015. This organization acknowledges that many of these women, transgender women, and non-gender conforming people have experience sexual and/or domestic violence. In a lot of cases, this history of sexual violence could give reason to their crime. The organization also explains how, once in prison, many of these people are subjected to more sexual violence or harassment by the guards or other individuals. The organization seeks to help women who as a result of the sexual violence they were experiencing, the crime they committed was potentially an act of self-defense. There are also circumstances where women are coerced into being an accomplice. Overall, this organization seeks to rectify a system which they believe wrongfully targets minority groups, people of color, and women.

ACLU explains that “The average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced on average to 15 years, even though most women who kill their partners do so to protect themselves from violence initiated by their partners”. This means that women are being more harshly prosecuted for the same crime when, in a lot of cases, that crime was a response to their partners’ violence. Based on this statistic, it can be seen that there is some inequity in sentence-length between genders. This alludes to the possibility that carceral feminism may result in the increased suffering and persecution of minority groups.

Another example of how carceral feminism may affect minority groups can be seen through examining the case of ‘The Central Park Five’, in 1989, five African American and Latin American teenagers were arrested and convicted for the brutal rape of Trisha Meili in New York’s Central Park. All of them received prison sentences ranging from 6-13 years. However, with the progression of technology and the addition of DNA evidence, it was revealed that the sole perpetrator of the rape was Matias Reyes, meaning that the other five men were innocent. This is a case where because of the harsh criminal sentences and punishments associated with rape cases, this can lead to potentially innocent people being wrongfully persecuted. Additionally, in this case, minority groups can be, as a result, more negatively affected by the harsher punishments that carceral feminism aims to support.

Feminist Anti-Carceral Policy & Research Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.crg.berkeley.edu/research/feminist-anti-carceral-and-research-project/

History.com Editors. (2019, May 14). The Central Park Five. Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/central-park-five

Survived Punished. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://survivedandpunished.org/

Words From Prison - Did You Know...? (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.aclu.org/other/words-prison-did-you-know