ABSTRACT

First and foremost, the scholars of the works under review render an unrecognized population, imprisoned women, as human, alive, and central to the political issues surrounding policing, incarceration, and violence in the United States. Black women are incarcerated at three times the rate of White women, and considering the disparity in the incarceration rate, the effects of the numbers are devastating for Black communities and families. There are women who while giving birth are chained and shackled to gurneys only to have their babies immediately taken from them. In Arrested Justice, Beth Ritchie uses the lived experiences and stories of Black women who have borne the brunt of a double-edged public policy structure that has rendered Black women not only as marginalized individuals but also as a population that has been systematically subordinated in the system. Black women’s bodies have always been in danger of existing as sensationalized objects, even when involved in the context of abolitionist and anti-slavery movements.