Imperfect Victims

October 10, 2022
Goodmark (Decriminalizing Domestic Violence), founder of the University of Maryland’s Gender Violence Clinic, spotlights in this disturbing study the ways in which the criminal justice system victimizes survivors of gender-based violence. According to Goodmark, the push in the 1980s and ’90s to increase enforcement of laws prohibiting gender-based violence cast women in the role of “imperfect victims” and encouraged “vengeful equity” arrests that treat women the same as men, despite evidence that “when do use violence, they do so in self-defense.” (In California, for example, women’s arrests increased by 400% after the passage of mandatory arrest laws for intimate partner violence.) Goodmark also documents police abuse of sex workers and victims of gender-based violence, and highlights prosecutors’ frequent use of material witness warrants to detain trafficked and abused women indefinitely to compel their testimony. According to Goodmark, criminal punishment of women who fight back against their abusers is unjustifiable on all four of its supposed grounds—rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence, and retribution—and leaves women with profound collateral harm, including difficulties finding housing and employment, even after their release from prison. Elsewhere, Goodmark cites evidence that diversion programs aimed at keeping girls out of the juvenile justice system are not equally available to Black youth. Throughout, Goodmark buttresses her call for an abolition feminism opposed to the carceral system with harrowing case studies and hard data. This provocation hits the mark.

Starred review from November 4, 2022

There are women who suffer at the hands of domestic abusers, rapists, and traffickers until they snap and fight back, which often leads to their own arrest and conviction. That is especially true of abuse survivors who are women of color, trans, or gender nonconforming people, all deserving of civil rights and strong legal defenses like everyone else. Goodmark's (law, Univ. of Maryland; Decriminalizing Domestic Violence) latest book argues that the way to protect criminalized survivors is to dismantle the carceral system and consider problems and solutions from a social justice lens. This book tells the stories of women who survived domestic violence but did not receive fair treatment under the law. Readers will not have heard most of these stories on the news, but these women's voices are undeniably important and add depth to any discussion of the rights of those who have experienced domestic violence. VERDICT An essential read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the concept of abolition feminism and supports the rights of all survivors of domestic violence, regardless of their race or life circumstances.--Jennifer Moore

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