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Issue 5.3 | Summer 2007 — Women, Prisons and Change

Engendering Justice:
Women, Prisons and Change

Panel One

CHALLENGING MYTHS, BUILDING A MOVEMENT
Download the transcript. (PDF, 152 KB)

Gender, race and class help define our notions of “criminality” within a system in which prison and punishment seem a natural, even an inevitable, end. By taking up a number of seemingly disparate threads—from the economics of prison expansion and the war on drugs to gender-based violence and the various failures of current immigration and education policies—noted scholars and activists help us weave an understanding of the ways in which imprisonment has become a normalized part of contemporary society.

PARTICIPANTS:

  • Patricia Allard
    Criminal Justice Program, Brennan Center for Justice
  • Chino Hardin
    Prison Moratorium Project
  • Andrea Ritchie
    INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
  • Julia Sudbury (Moderator)
    Department of Social Work, University of Toronto; author of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex
  • Kay Whitlock
    American Friends Service Committee

Panel Two

CHANGING ACTIONS
Download the transcript. (PDF, 156 KB)

What work is being done that tries not simply to reform prisons, but also to change fundamentally the ways in which we think about and approach imprisonment? If we, as a society, expect to move beyond the destructive and dehumanizing cycle of crime and punishment, toward what alternatives for justice might we aim?

PARTICIPANTS: