Call For Papers !! Women In The Criminal Justice System

July 11, 2007

Call for Papers and Creative Submissions for a Special Issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal: WOMEN AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

WOMEN AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

POLICING, PROSECUTION, AND INCARCERATION

Call for Papers and Creative Submissions for a Special Issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal

Despite the fact that women constitute the fastest growing segment of the U.S. prison population, the ways in which women encounter and are affected by the criminal justice system remain largely understudied. In an effort to make a significant contribution to the scholarship in this arena, “Women and Criminal Justice: Policing, Prosecution, and Incarceration” is a special issue of the NWSA Journal dedicated to exploring the global connections among the many ways in which women experience various aspects of the criminal justice system. This issue will examine the broad range of specific challenges faced by women encountering the courts, police, and prisons. It serves as a means of documenting and bearing witness to the struggles of women whose voices are frequently silenced, while at the same time providing theoretical and analytical frames with which to discuss these issues.

The questions we are interested in exploring include but are not restricted to the following: How have shifts in laws and police procedures contributed to the rapidly rising numbers of women being sent to prison in the U.S. since the 1980s? In what ways do criminal justice systems intervene in, and even sever, legal and emotional ties between mothers and children? How are women engaging criminal justice issues as community leaders and activists? In instances when incarceration displaces significant numbers of women from a single community, how does their absence affect whole communities and also shape the ways in which people perceive and construct individual and group identities? We seek explorations and answers to these questions that engage notions of gender, place, and culture as well as documentation and analysis of leadership and activism.

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