The Criminalization of Women

The Criminalization of Women
Short Essay Prompt

Readings:
1) Julia Sudbury’s “Women of Color, Globalization, and the Politics of Criminalization” (in course textbook)
2) Eric A. Stanley’s “Introduction: Fugitive Flesh: Gender Self-Determination, Queer Abolition, and
Trans Resistance,” from Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (PDF)

Your paper should be 3.5 to 4 pages, size 12 font, 1 inch margins, double-space, MLA. Papers over 4 pages will be deducted one letter grade.

Consider our assigned class readings by Sudbury and Stanley and discuss the following:

A) What is the prison industrial complex (PIC)? What has been the effect of women"s mass incarceration on a local, national, and global level?

B) How are women (cis and trans) uniquely harmed by prison sentences? How does the PIC reproduce gender binaries and heteronormativity?

C) How does the legal system disproportionately target women (cis and trans), people of color, queer people, and/or working class people? What is the connection between the globalization of poverty and the
“boom in women’s imprisonment”?

E) What are alternatives to the PIC? “What, then, might a world look like in which harm is met with healing and support, rather than the displacement and reviolation produced by the PIC?” (Stanley and Smith 6).

Please incorporate the readings into your response; be sure to use examples from both texts to support your claims.

You will be graded on your ability to:
1) clearly state and comprehensively describe the criminalization of women
2) interpret/evaluate ideas in order to develop a comprehensive analysis or synthesis
3) analyze thoroughly one’s own and others’ assumptions and carefully evaluate the relevance of contexts when presenting a position
4) imaginatively take a specific position and take into account the complexities of the issues; acknowledge limits of your position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis)
present logical conclusions and related outcomes that reflect your informed evaluations and ability to place evidence and perspectives discussed in prioritized order.