ABSTRACT
Building on the literature that traces the evolution of carceral feminism back to second wave feminist calls for victims’ rights, legal protections, and the professionalization of the anti-violence movement, this chapter unpacks the emotions underlying feminist calls for punitive and carceral state responses to violence and sexual violence against women, which we situate as an outcome of centuries of denial and lack of acknowledgement. We then discuss the legacy of Carol Smart, a foremother of critical feminist criminology. Smart’s work is foundational to the discipline, but seems to have been forgotten amongst those working in critical prison studies and doing anti-carceral work. Over 30 years ago, Smart not only pronounced law as a gendering practice, but she also warned against looking to or relying on law to support and/or produce feminist outcomes. Specifically, she argued that this could lead to juridogenesis—an iatrogenic-like effect of using law that can lead to the growth in technologies of knowledge production that facilitate disciplinary mechanisms and disregard and/or disqualify alternative discourses or systems of knowledge. We conclude by outlining feminist ways forward in the penal abolition movement that stand outside law’s power and instead look to community alternatives to incarceration.
