This paper proposes a conceptual framework of entrapped carceral web entanglement to describe the complexity of systems-involved women’s community-based carceral contact. The framework is grounded in the author’s three-year in-depth inquiry into 33 cisgender women’s experiences with legal and child protective services (CPS) contact for being systems-identified as having used force in their relationships. Most women disclosed domestic and sexual violence survivorship histories. They were recruited from an antiviolence intervention (AVI) that received referrals from communities with mandatory and preferred arrest laws. The women described how their probation, CPS, and court-ordered AVI contact entrapped and entangled them for years.
Despite growing attention to reentry barriers, few studies examine how mothers interpret and negotiate their post-incarceration maternal identities. Drawing on interviews with 31 formerly incarcerated women, this study examines how stigma is experienced across internal, institutional, and interpersonal domains during reentry. Findings reveal how the experience of shame is both an internalized state and an anticipatory process that is further institutionalized by employment and housing exclusion. Yet, participants demonstrate active strategies of resistance and resilience in their process of identity-construction. The study offers novel insights for those invested in supporting formerly incarcerated mothers and their families.
Informed by Critical Race Feminism, this study sought to examine whether hazard of suspension across ages differed for minoritized girls as compared to white girls. According to results, Black and Latina girls experienced greater hazards of suspension as compared to white girls, hazards that increased over age. These findings held accounting for teacher-reported externalizing behaviors and a number of relevant control variables. Results provide some support for the Critical Race Feminist perspective’s application to school suspension for girls, suggesting minoritized girls and Black girls in particular are significantly more likely to experience school suspension as they age.
This study examined the experiences of sexual assault survivors whose cases were criminally prosecuted after their previously untested sexual assault kits (SAKs) were discovered and tested for DNA evidence. We conducted qualitative interviews with 32 survivors, the majority of whom identified as Black women, to examine how their perceptions of distributive, retributive, and restorative justice collectively shaped their overall experiences of justice. Although most cases resulted in convictions, survivors described justice as fragmented and incomplete. Findings highlight how structural inequities and institutional failures constrain justice and suggest that theories of justice should be grounded more firmly in survivors’ lived realities.
