Professors emeriti Carol Jacobsen, Abby Stewart, and David Winter recently published in the UCLA Journal of Gender & Law: Carceral Backlash: The Case for Changing the Course of Women’s Homicide Convictions.
Carol Jacobsen is Professor Emerita of Film and Photography, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Law, Abby Stewart is Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies, and David Winter is Professor Emeritus of Psychology.
In the article, Professors Jacobsen, Stewart, and Winter argue that women are unjustly convicted of homicide due to gendered and racially encoded criminal-legal practices that ignore the realities of women's lives. They propose that we move away from retribution and criminalization by replacing the tools of the state - police, prison, probation, parole - with an unremitting, tenacious push toward redefining laws and legal practices and designing new initiatives to address the deep need for health care, education, housing and social services in order to fully respect everyone's constitutional rights to justice.
They write: “The law has traditionally viewed women who are accused of murder with contempt and fear, as alien creatures who strike at the roots of home, family, civil government, and threats to society—in short, treasonous. The reality is very different. The home, family, and government are the greatest sites of violence, misogyny, oppression, and death, threatening more than half of society. Failure to recognize and account for gender victimization by legal and criminal systems has legitimated violence against women and predetermined their fate.”
Congratulations, Professors Jacobsen, Stewart, and Winter!
Read the full article here.
