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Imperfect Victims

Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism
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( 105 ratings, 22 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Imperfect Victims presents a profound argument for abolition feminism, advocating the dismantling of the carceral system to protect survivors of gender-based violence. Author and abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark uses the voices of survivors and clients to illuminate how increased criminal justice intervention has often harmed those it intended to protect, especially women of colour and trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. The book guides readers through the criminalisation of survival and envisions a just world beyond punishment-focused systems.
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Format: Hardback
$18099
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book is ideal for readers interested in social justice, feminist theory, legal reform, and advocates seeking a critical examination of current responses to gender-based violence.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalised survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system.

Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of victims, particularly women of colour and trans and gender-nonconforming people. Imperfect Victims argues that only dismantling the system will bring that punishment to an end.

Amplifying the voices of survivors, including her own clients, abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark deftly guides readers on a step-by-step journey through the criminalisation of survival. Abolition feminism reveals the possibility of a just world beyond the carceral state, which is fundamentally unable to respond to, let alone remedy, harm. As Imperfect Victims shows, abolition feminism is the only politics and practice that can unwind the indescribable damage inflicted on survivors by the very system purporting to protect them.

Series: Gender and Justice

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  • Imperfect Victims
    A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalised survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system. Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration...
    Paperback
    $4799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Broken
    In the United States, the second-wave feminist fight to achieve legal and societal recognition of men's violence against women leaned heavily on the victim-offender binary, which has since become inscribed in funding schemes, legal remedies, and intervention approaches. In Broken, scholar-practitioner Lisa Young Larance draws on her extensive in-depth qualitative inquiry and practice experience with women who have participated in...
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    $5699
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  • Feeling Trapped
    The relationship between class and intimate violence against women is much misunderstood. While many studies of intimate violence focus on poor and working-class women, few examine the issue comparatively in terms of class privilege and class disadvantage. James Ptacek draws on in-depth interviews with sixty women from wealthy, professional, working-class, and poor communities to investigate how social class shapes both...
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  • Decriminalizing Domestic Violence
    Decriminalizing Domestic Violence asks the crucial, yet often overlooked, question of why and how the criminal legal system became the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States. It introduces readers, both new and well versed in the subject, to the ways in which the criminal legal system harms rather than helps those who are subjected to abuse...
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    $10600
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    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • The Stains of Imprisonment
    Recent decades have seen a widespread effort to imprison more people for sexual violence. The Stains of Imprisonment offers an ethnographic account of one of the worlds that this push has created: an English prison for men convicted of sex offences. This book examines the ways in which prisons are morally communicative institutions, instilling in prisoners particular ideas about the...
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  • On Shifting Ground
    On Shifting Ground examines how it is to become a man in a place and time defined by economic contraction and carceral expansion. Jamie J. Fader draws on in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample of Philadelphia's millennial men to analyse the key tensions that organise their lives: isolation versus connectedness, stability versus "drama," hope versus fear, and stigma and...
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    $5699
    Available
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  • Imperfect Victims
    A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalised survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system. Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration...
    Hardback
    $18099
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Library Journal calls it "an essential read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of abolition feminism and supports survivors of domestic violence regardless of race or circumstance." Publishers Weekly praises Goodmark's use of "harrowing case studies and hard data," describing the work as a provocative and precise challenge to the status quo.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780520391109

Publisher: University of California Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 31 January 2023

Country: United States

Imprint: University of California Press

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 23.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 544g

Pages: 296

About the Author

Leigh Goodmark is Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and the author of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence and A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System.

Also by Leigh Goodmark

View all
  • Imperfect Victims
    A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalised survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system. Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration...
    Paperback
    $4799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Decriminalizing Domestic Violence
    Decriminalizing Domestic Violence asks the crucial, yet often overlooked, question of why and how the criminal legal system became the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States. It introduces readers, both new and well versed in the subject, to the ways in which the criminal legal system harms rather than helps those who are subjected to abuse...
    Paperback
    $10600
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks

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