Abstract
More than a decade before Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 140), disparate networks of women whose identities and experiences placed them at odds with cultural norms of femininity were cultivating a distinct critique of the state centered on the racialized and gendered nature of violence and punishment in the USA. All Our Trials tells the stories of the heroines of this movement, many of whom have been overlooked or forgotten by other feminist histories, documenting the development of anticarceral feminist thought and practice. As well as chronicling individual women’s struggles for justice, Emily L. Thuma explores how activist networks led by, and in association with, marginalized women gave voice to those on the receiving end of institutional and interpersonal violence. By exposing the struggles of the silent multitudes who had been rendered invisible by the coercive practices of the carceral state, these networks problematized existing feminist and anticarceral ideologies. In the contemporary context of social movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, which criticize the ever-growing prison-industrial complex and draw attention to illegitimate violence perpetrated by agents of the state, All Our Trials provides a genealogy of the ideas behind alternatives to criminal justice; the roots of restorative and transformative justice theories can be found in the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s.
The book is divided into four main chapters. The first, entitled “Lessons in Self-Defense,” examines four cases of women (Joan Little, Inez Garcia, Dessie Woods, and Yvonne Wanrow) imprisoned for killing a sexual assailant, exploring how campaigns to exculpate them engaged in racial, economic, and colonial critiques of the punishment of those who had acted in self-defense. Thuma focuses mainly on how the Joan Little case caught the nation’s imagination, resulting in a campaign to save her from the death penalty. Activists collaborated in unprecedented numbers, fundraising for legal costs, and engaging in direct action and consciousness raising. The campaign made the violent coercion of incarcerated women, generally hidden from public view, visible to the nation; the dozens of other women who came forward to tell their own stories of violation in carceral settings made clear that the Little case was far from an isolated incident. In addition, by positioning Little as a ‘political prisoner’, the campaign expanded the use of the term and stimulated public debate over the use of violence to enact sexist and racist ideologies. Little’s successful exoneration rested on the collaboration of prisoners’ rights, civil rights, feminist, Black Power, and other left-wing movements, paving the way for similar collective actions in defense of Garcia, Woods, and Wanrow. Taken together, an examination of these campaigns illustrates the contradictions and unintended consequences of a criminal justice approach to punishing sexual violence. The campaigns developed an important critique of mainstream (white) feminists’ calls for punitive responses to perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence, recognizing the specific racial harms created by such policies, for example the use of false rape allegations against black men. The book shows the continuity of such debates; as incarceration rates continue to increase in the USA, and the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the prison population fails to reduce, critical evaluations of carceral feminism are needed now more than ever.
The second chapter shifts focus to the use of medicalized forms of behavior modification within prisons, which became increasingly common in the 1970s. Thuma foregrounds the work of the Coalition to Stop Institutional Violence (CSIV), a feminist-led alliance of organizations that united against the practice of labelling prisoners ‘violent’ in order to mandate such practices. The chapter examines CSIV’s organization and theory, tracing the origins of the organization, its successful battle against the creation of a psychiatric treatment center for ‘violent women’ prisoners, and its critique of the medicalization of punishment in women’s prisons. CSIV redefined female prisoners as victims of institutional violence, thus problematizing the discrete categorization of ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ by the carceral state. Furthermore, CSIV adopted principles of participatory democracy, attempting to counter power imbalances so often experienced by those who had been deemed insane by state institutions. Exposing the abuses of the prison regime, CSIV helped to advance the nascent abolitionist movement in the USA. Challenging the fusion of the therapeutic state with the carceral state also necessitated discussion of alternative approaches to criminal justice, leading CSIV to call for transformative justice approaches centered around community self-determination. Most interestingly, Thuma highlights how CSIV negotiated trans-inclusivity; calls from other feminist organizations to exclude trans women were rejected, and the assumption that ‘women-only’ spaces could be free of hierarchy was repudiated. This early example of trans-inclusionary feminism reminds us that punishment of gender nonconformity is multifaceted and complex and cannot be reduced to a ‘women’s issue’.
Chapter three foregrounds a unique method of feminist prison activism: namely, the use of women’s prison newsletters to pass information and develop discussion between the incarcerated and the free. Thuma’s archival research truly shines here, as she traces female prisoners’ daily struggles against carceral violence via conversations occurring in two key publications, Through the Looking Glass and No More Cages. The author’s characterization of publication as a political action places these newsletters within the broader context of the print revolution of the 1960s and 1970s; both newsletters were independently published by feminist collectives and were active between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. These documents represent a unique form of communication, as they accepted writings from both incarcerated and non-incarcerated contributors, thus creating spaces in which counter-carceral theory could further evolve. The newsletters developed criticisms of the male-focused prisoner rights movement, and of the feminist antiviolence movement’s increasing reliance on the criminal justice system, recentering the voices of female prisoners in order to make their needs known. The geographies of this communication are fascinating, with newsletters being passed in and out of prisons surreptitiously, and prisoners facing harsh punishment if their contributions were discovered. These newsletters also fought the carceral culture of control by making the plight of prisoners visible outside prison walls, resisting the isolation enforced by such institutions.
The final chapter relocates the book’s focus from prison activism to street-level mobilization, presenting two case studies of feminist coalition-building in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Both alliances sought to address gender, racial and economic violence from an intersectional perspective, confronting police brutality and collusion with the carceral state. First, Thuma describes the Coalition for Women’s Safety (CWS), which formed in response to the murder crisis of 1979 in Boston. The multiracial nature of the CWS provided space for marginalized groups such as the Combahee River Collective to influence its ideology and strategy, strengthening the coalition’s theorization and providing a basis for the later exposition of intersectional feminist theory. The chapter then turns to the Washington, D.C. Rape Crisis Center, relating the Center’s shift away from support for the criminal justice system, partly resulting from a recruitment drive which focused on diversifying the Center’s staff. The Center’s organization of the First National Third World Women and Violence Conference in 1980 resulted in a remarkable coming-together of ethnic minority activists; Thuma uses papers from this conference to illustrate the debates which occurred regarding the criminal justice system’s role in responding to violence against women of color. One contrast Thuma notes between prison-based and street-based activism is the latter’s focus on housing, highlighting displacement and dispersal of black communities as fundamentally connected to violence against women. The importance of neighborhood organizing as an opportunity to build a collective critical voice around such issues reinforces the arguments made by the activists and organizations explored in previous chapters.
This book plugs an important gap in the history of feminism, and indeed of the USA. It is both useful and relevant to see the historical context of contemporary anticarceral arguments, and it is striking how many continuities can be seen between current debates and discussions occurring in the 1970s and 1980s. All Our Trials is also a great resource for anyone working on alternative ways of approaching domestic and sexual violence, as it sets out the critiques of carceral feminism developed during this time period, many of which remain relevant to contemporary discussions of the place of the criminal justice system in responding to such violence. However, those looking for detailed exploration of the theoretical debates and the alternatives to the carceral state proposed during this period may wish to supplement this book with further reading, as the book is focused on history rather than theory development. Overall, All Our Trials provides important documentation of the struggles occurring through these decades and is a useful catalogue of the many individuals, organizations, and collectives that came and went throughout this time period.