This edition includes reviews of three wonderful books: Our Bodies, Our Crimes (Flavin), Out in the Storm (Caputo), and Effigy (Cotton). Read on!
Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America by Jeanne Flavin. New York University Press. 2009, 307 pp.
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Review by Heather R. Hlavka, Marquette University
Little tangible change has accompanied the increased attention to both the rise in number of incarcerated women in the United States and to its devastating effects on children and families. Nearly 200,000 women are incarcerated in the United States – most whom are of child-bearing age and are mothers of children under the age 18 (p. 139). While incarceration interferes with women’s ability to raise their children, in her timely book, Our Bodies, Our Crimes, Jeanne Flavin presents a less obvious reality: Prison, a system that is gendered male, prevents women from accessing their reproductive rights by denying quality reproductive health care and imprisoning many women for the duration of their reproductive years (p. 4). Flavin asks: How does the criminal justice system police women’s reproduction in America? How do particular actors, institutions, and ideologies figure in the social regulation of women’s bodies? How does the state respond to the threat that women’s sexuality and reproductive behaviors pose to the dominant order?
Chiefly, Our Bodies, Our Crimes is about women’s rights to privacy, bodily integrity, and social citizenship. The crux of Flavin’s argument centers on how the criminal justice system, as an agent for social control, limits access to full citizenship by maintaining patriarchal regulation of motherhood, sexuality, and transgressions against gender norms (pp. 3-4). With archival research, law, policy, and case studies, she effectively reduces the distance between women outside and inside prison by drawing attention to experiential intersections and shared structural constraints. Presented in three parts, Begetting, Bearing, and Mothering, Flavin provides convincing and compelling evidence to support her thesis that the state – always envisaging women as subjects synonymous with procreation – actively controls and disciplines women’s bodies and reproductive lives.
Couched in the battles over abortion and the eugenics movement of the twentieth century, Our Bodies, Our Crimes begins with a broad overview of reproductive rights in America. Against this backdrop, Flavin moves beyond abortion debates to draw attention to a range of retributivist and paternalist policies by which the criminal justice system criminalizes women’s reproduction. In Part I: Begetting (Chapters 2 – 4) Flavin argues that the state undercuts women’s access to abortion both outside (e.g., Medicaid restrictions, waiting periods, counseling requirements, and parental notification and consent laws) and inside prison walls (e.g., obstacles such as court orders, arranging and paying for transportation, security costs and staff expenses). While some women are directly prevented from reproducing via contemporary sterilization programs (e.g., Project Prevention) and no-procreation orders, others are charged with first-degree murder for the “rare and unique problem” of neonaticide and abandonment. Flavin confronts the rationalizations touted for such practices, drawing on case evidence and legislation ill-suited to address issues such as adolescent sexuality, teenage pregnancy, and equal access to birth control.
In Part II: Bearing (Chapters 5 – 6) Flavin moves the discussion from conception to pregnancy. Careful case and legal documentation situate fetal protectionism and fetal rights as detrimental to women’s social citizenship. Recent “fetus-centered homicide laws” designed to protect “innocent preborn victims” obscure women’s bodily integrity and effectively undermine crucial efforts to address violence against women, reproductive health care and drug dependency. Flavin draws attention to the prosecution of pregnant women for staying with abusive husbands and identifies several hundred cases in which women were arrested and charged with felonies resulting from pregnancies ending in stillbirth despite lack of evidence that drugs were the cause (p. 108). Further, mobilization of the criminal justice system for purposes of punitive surveillance and drug treatment ignores the fact that women in prison are often exposed to inadequate prenatal and reproductive health care.
Part III: Mothering clearly demonstrates that “women’s right to parent is not absolute” (p. 141). Fragmenting discourses and distorted constructions, symbolically and materially, divide all women into the opposing categories of “good mother” and “bad mother.” Chapters 7 and 8 solidify Flavin’s position that the state exerts control over women’s reproductive lives by impeding the right to mother. She underscores both the formidable problems of maintaining the mother-child relationship while incarcerated (e.g., geographically remote prisons, visitation constraints, time limits on reunification) and upon release (e.g., income, employment and housing issues). Although not an exhaustive review, Flavin continues to weave in women’s experiences and structural barriers to mothering in Chapter 8, addressing violence against women and the curious matrix of battered women and child custody issues, restraining orders and mandatory arrest policies.
A cursory review of state responses to violence against women is a natural transition to the concluding section. Flavin’s précis advances her thesis of state incongruity: actions ranging from sterilization and forced cesareans to being prevented from parenting while incarcerated are justified as being “for the woman’s own good” or “in the best interests of the (preborn) child.” Largely symbolic feats of patriarchal protectionism, many laws and policies (e.g., the Unborn Victims of Violence Act) are born of visceral responses to high-profile cases. Coexisting contradictions abound such as restrictions on abortions, lack of quality, affordable drug treatment and the “arrests and prosecutions of women for continuing their pregnancies to term” (p. 185). Flavin’s call to social justice and action thus rests firmly on state responses that continue to blame and demonize (particular) women while overlooking the root causes of violence, teen or unwanted pregnancy, and drug dependency.
This review does not do justice to Jeanne Flavin’s achievement in Our Bodies, Our Crimes. To her credit, Flavin ably moves discussions of reproductive rights from abortion politics to women’s right to bodily integrity and social autonomy. Her success lies in interweaving the particular and the local with dilemmas that epitomize the policing of women’s reproduction in America. Rather than disconnecting women outside and inside the criminal justice system, Flavin asserts that all women are vulnerable (uniquely and universally) to state dependency and intrusion due to their ever-present pre-pregnant status. While she rightly critiques case law and turns to “broad-based measures that strengthen women’s economic status, education, choice-making, autonomy, sexual power, and health care” (p. 189) for answers to complex social problems, I was left craving a more thorough discussion. Similarly, some academics will desire deeper theoretical engagement with such concepts as bodily integrity and sovereignty, social citizenship and patriarchy. Still, Flavin’s jargon-free style will assume wide appeal and prove valuable for social service and criminal justice practitioners, legislators, and students of sociology, criminology, women’s studies, public health and policy, political science and social work.
Out in the Storm: Drug-Addicted Women Living as Shoplifters and Sex Workers by Gail A. Caputo. Northeastern University Press. 2008, 231 pages.
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Review by Judith Grant, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Out in the Storm is an ethnographic study of 38 women's lives that details their experiences as they navigate their way into and through criminal behavior in order to earn their living. This book is much needed as it is one of the few monographs that actually highlights women's experiences as they earn their living through shoplifting and sex work in the greater Philadelphia area. The book is specifically about the women's reliance on crime in order to finance their drug addictions.
The women's narratives fill the book with the stories of their lives – the good, the bad and the ugly. The book is divided into four main parts: the women's early life trauma, their coming of age, making crime specialization work in the urban drug culture, and risk management. Each chapter takes the reader on a journey that helps us see and understand the unfolding of the women's lives. Three main objectives are highlighted throughout the book: (1) the etiology of the women's early lives and trauma as they experience it, (2) an explanation of how the women manage and carry out their criminal careers, and (3) how the women manage the risks and dangers in their crime work.
The importance of this book lies in the methods that Caputo uses: the belief that women are the experts in their own lives; the importance of the intersectionality of the analysis, meaning that the author weaves into the women’s narratives the inclusion of gender, class and race; and the sociological positioning of these women as workers in crime. Through highlighting the women as workers rather than outsiders, Caputo offers the reader a fuller, more complete understanding of their crime and them as the participants. As much as the women are diverse throughout her study, they are first and foremost active agents in their lives, and they have the ability to make choices. As Caputo states, “Women are both agents and products of change” (pg. 186).
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the study whereby Caputo sets up her choice of interest (shoplifters and sex workers), and the analytic method she ultimately chose. Most significant in this chapter is our introduction to the women – who they are, where they live and their socioeconomic status within the parameters of the area where the study was carried out. Although Caputo had originally planned to interview only shoplifters, her research evolved as she planned a new approach which took her to a halfway house where other women also wished to be interviewed: including women who did not shoplift but also used drug selling or sex work to finance their addictions. Such an inclusion provided Caputo with a sense of diversity that enhanced her study and gave her the ability to compare and contrast the experiences of the two groups of women.
Chapter 2, “Early Life Trauma,” takes the reader into the early and traumatic lives of the women. As their childhood stories unfold, we read about the trauma these women experience, mainly African American women within families that can be described as part of the urban poor. The explicit narratives give the reader a taste of the horror of these women's early lives. The women provide narratives relating to the violence and victimization, not only to themselves as children, but also within their families; the commonplace drug culture in their neighborhoods and within their homes, including alcohol abuse and substance abuse; and the resultant consequences that are linked in their lives as girls and ultimately as women, including low self-esteem, earlier initiation into the drug culture, mental health problems, addiction and ultimately criminal involvement.
Chapter 3, “Coming of Age,” brings the reader into the women's adolescent and early adult decisions and their relationship to their early trauma that shapes their pathways into either shoplifting or sex work. Again, the women's narratives fill the reader in on how the women experience their early teens and adult lives. We learn how the women's lives are conditioned by their early social circumstances – social class, culture and early abuse and too by their choices and the decisions they made as they mature into young adulthood. As the narratives show, we as the reader are able to ‘see’ how their lives transpire into resultant pathways into crime.
Chapter 4 highlights for the reader how the women were able to make their jobs of shoplifting and sex work profitable in the urban drug culture. All the women interviewed are addicted to drugs and, in this chapter, Caputo shows the reader how those women who were shoplifters now gravitate to sex work as shoplifting placed more demands on them than success as a sex worker. This chapter provides a link back to the women's neighborhoods and the resources available to them and shows us how such resources make their crimes successful. The women make their crimes ‘work’ through their access to crime (despite situational and structural forces and the limits and opportunities of their specific situations), their personal knowledge and resourcefulness and the accommodating systems available to them. The accommodating systems comprise the neighborhood structures that provide the women the ability to facilitate their crimes and how “in taking care of business” (pg. 109) they are more efficiently and successfully able to do so.
Chapter 5 provides a further understanding of how women negotiate and manage the risks inherent in their work professions, something of which the women are very much aware. The narratives highlighted in this chapter provide the tools the women use whether they are shoplifting or practicing their sex work. For shoplifting, the women's narratives state that they not only have to use certain methods to do so (i.e., condition their mind but also follow their instincts) but also how to do it (i.e., act like a regular shopper, engage in conversation with store employees). Important tips are also offered by the women for working as a sex worker. First and foremost, they suggest, they never get in a car with a ‘cop,’ and set their own ground rules. The most important point that I as a reader came away with in this chapter is that of the “constant mindfulness” (pg. 184) that must always be front and center for the women. There is much danger inherent in these types of work for women and such mindfulness encompasses the ability to know when to continue with the crime and when to quit.
The final chapter, Chapter 6, provides a short summation of the women's stories and a suggestion for policies. In this final chapter, we find how the women see themselves as being “out in the storm,” but yet they also narrate for the reader how they exercise the management of their crimes considering what their specialization may be: shoplifting or sex work. The women in this book are smart and show us how they survive the choices they made and are making. The women want what all of us want, “to live a quiet, normal life” (pg. 196). But they also are cognizant of how they came to where they are and wish for other young girls not to have to travel the roads they travelled. Their suggestions are hopeful if we as a society would only listen, including preventing child victimization and drug abuse and providing treatment for drug addiction and mental suffering.
In summation, this is a book that is much needed – it is a must-read and one that should be given much attention. It is an outstanding contribution to the literature and was for me a pleasure to read. This book fills a major research gap in feminist work in the fields of addiction and in crime. This is a book useful for Women's Studies courses, in Social Work courses, in Sociology, in Criminology, and for those making social policies. It is a book that, if we are willing to hear and to really listen, would provide us all with a greater understanding and a more compassionate outlook for women who choose pathways that ultimately lead to criminal behavior.
Effigy: Images of Capital Defendants (Issues in Crime and Justice) by Allison M. Cotton. Lexington Books. 2008, 230 pages.
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Review by Jennifer Owens, University of Missouri – St. Louis
In Effigy (2008), Allison Cotton follows the case of Donta Page, a young African American defendant who is charged with and confessed to the rape and murder of a young Caucasian female in 1999. Aptly titled, Effigy examines the life, trial, and sentencing of the defendant who is portrayed to the jury as a “savage beast” by the prosecuting attorneys and as a “troubled youth” worthy of mercy by the defense. Using rich qualitative data from interviews with the defendant, courtroom personnel, and jury members, Cotton provides unique insight into the process and problems inherent in deciding what to believe in a capital murder case. The prosecuting and defense attorneys attempt to show the defendant in very different lights in order to convince the decision-makers (jurors and judges) to see their version of the defendant. The prosecuting attorneys use fear, stereotypes, and an idealistic image of the virtuous victim to assert that, not only is the defendant guilty, but is not deserving of sympathy or compassion. On the other hand, the defense explains that Donta Page was born in an impoverished community to an extremely abusive mother and, because of his unfortunate circumstances, suffered brain damage at a very young age. While he is deserving of punishment for the crime he committed, they argue, he should not to be put to death. In the Page case, the prosecution is seeking a first degree murder charge where the maximum sentence is the death penalty. The defense team is seeking a second degree murder charge with a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ultimately, the jury must come to a decision on which attorney they want to believe.
The introduction summarizes the main points of the book including a brief summary of the case, the author’s goals, what a trial is/does, and capital punishment. Chapter two goes into greater detail about the death penalty in the United States and how juries operate. The author provides a good overview of the process and also addresses some of the shortcoming including inadequate funding for the defense of indigents, racial bias and discrimination, and changes in the public support of the death penalty. The author readily admits her personal biases (see chapter 3, pp. 62) but is able to explain the capital punishment debate by addressing both the arguments for and against the death penalty.
Chapter three begins the heart of the book elaborating on the importance of defining the defendant. Some of the theories that are useful when analyzing a capital case are examined including social construction, attribution theory, and Goffman’s work on the self. Although sometimes redundant with information provided in the introduction, this chapter lays out the foundation for Cotton’s argument that the image of the defendant is a crucial predictor of the outcome of a trial. The chapter also lays out the hypotheses and methodology in greater detail. Specifically the author asks two research questions: (1) How do attorneys attempt to portray an image of the defendant? and (2) How is that image related to the guilty decision? (pp.49).
In chapters four through seven, the author addresses how the defense and prosecution saw its mission, to personalize or demonize the defendant, and how they set about accomplishing that mission. Chapter four introduces the legal fight in the Page case between first and second-degree murder. The lawyers and court proceedings are addressed in greater detail. The lawyers use the courtroom much like an actor uses a stage. They use props, extras and verbal and nonverbal communication to convey their stories and convince the jurors. Filled with rich qualitative excerpts from the opening and closing statements, the police confession interview, and testimonies of experts, friends, and family, two very different images of the defendant arise. This is further supplemented by the author’s firsthand account of the courtroom and its actors. She notes how the attorneys interacted with the defendant and the jury, when the jury and judge paid close attention to the evidence being presented, and when they seemed distracted. These detailed accounts reveal the courtroom’s atmosphere and ultimately provide insight that helps explain the outcome of the trial.
Chapter eight discusses the impact on jurors in a capital murder case. Arguably one of the most interesting chapters, the author used information from six jury members who were interviewed immediately following the guilty verdict by the defense team and two more jury members who were interviewed by the author two years later. Several questionable issues are raised by these interviews that indicated that some of the jurors were pressured into making a decision, used their own background knowledge and stereotypes to make conclusions about the defendant, and purposefully ignored information and evidence supplied during the trial. In light of this, Cotton raises the question of why the court allows certain evidence to be presented, but yet also allows jurors to ignore that evidence (pp. 166).
The conclusion chapter summarizes the Page case, driving home important theoretical issues and raising philosophical questions related to the use of imagery in the courtroom in US capital cases. Throughout the book, Cotton suggests that psychological explanations for criminal behavior are preferred by the prosecution over sociological explanations because it is “easier” to deem a person as a monster than to acknowledge and correct the society that produced a monster. In contrast, the defense provides an explanation for the defendant’s behavior as resulting from his abusive upbringing. While the narrative data gathered from the jurors and trial support the dichotomous view of the defendant, I would have liked to see more of the data gathered from the many one-on-one conversations the author had with the defendant.
Touching on a broad range of issues including: racial stereotypes, courtroom procedures, sentence disparity, and the capital punishment debate, this book would make a great addition to an upper level undergraduate class or spark an interesting discussion in a graduate classroom. In general, I found the book very easy to read even though it was addressing some very complex issues. This book would be appropriate for sociology or criminology courses including race and crime, criminal procedure, courts, lethal violence, capital punishment/death penalty, ethics in criminal justice, or could be incorporated in a theory class (with some direction). Overall, this book provided a detail understanding of a particular case that has very broad implications. Rarely is a book able to capture the courtroom dynamics using first hand observations before a case starts, during the trial, and after a sentence is handed down, drawing attention to the courtroom workgroups, juries, and the defendant whose life literally hangs in the balance.