San Antonio College Library

ABC News Anchor Diane Sawyer takes you on a journey into the world of women living behind bars in America's prison system today. On both political sides, there is an agreement that the American prison system needs to be re-examined. The United States has larger populations and longer sentences than much of the world. Women are the fastest growing group of prisoners in the country compared to men. Diane Sawyer and team went into four prisons across...

Exactly what role does gender play in crime, and in the criminal justice system? Addressing this two-part question from the perspective of the offender, the victim, the community, and the overall justice system, Andrew Wilczak provides an accessible introduction to the full range of issues involved. Notably, this comprehensive text: features an inclusive focus on both men and women, encompasses theory, as well as realities on the ground, draws on...

Out of the bedroom and into the headlines went the stories told by eight battered women who fought back from domestic abuse and ended up in prison. Claiming their actions were in self-defense, the "Framingham Eight" challenged the system for a chance at a new life. This ABC News program asks Did the abuse they suffered in any way justify what they did? And did any of the women deserve a second chance?

This two-part documentary presents a critical view of the current prison system from an abolitionist perspective. Breaking Down the Prison Industrial Complex, the first part, examines the racial and gendered violence of the prison system through the voices of two groups: women caught in the criminal justice system and leading scholars of prison abolition. Abolition: Past, Present, and Future, the second part, documents the recent history of the prison...

It has become a tragic inevitability that whenever international peacekeepers are sent to bring law and order to a war torn country, a vast and exploitative sex industry allegedly follows close behind. Correspondent looks at Bosnia and Kosovo where girls as young as 15 have been duped into working in brothels and forced to have sex with UN personnel. We find that the boys will be boys culture prevails and that international soldiers and police officers...

For the last ten years, the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been at war. The women bear the brunt of it. The precise number of victims suffering from rape and related diseases, of which traumatic fistula is one, is impossible to know. Shunned by their community, the women are often reluctant to come forward for treatment. Instead, they are forced to bear the physical and psychological scars of their ordeal alone. We travel...

This is the story of Amina, a girl from the village of Spingule tucked away in northern Afghanistan, who has been stoned to death for infidelity. Before the dust has settled, her community - those guilty of her brutal killing - is already closing in on itself. A wall of silence now surrounds the village. Caught in the house of a man who was not her husband, Amina has been sentenced according to Muslim law, and the village wastes no time in carrying...

They call Ciudad Juarez, a city in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, "the serial killers' playground." In the past decade, over 500 women have been murdered there. Most were abducted, raped, and tortured before they were killed. So many women have died that a new word has been invented to describe what is happening: "femicidios," the murder of women. Despite an international outcry, the killings have continued. There are even claims the police are protecting...

"Since the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison populations soared, the increase in women?s rate of incarceration has steadily outpaced that of men. This book draws upon four years of on-the-ground research in a major US women?s prison to uncover why tougher drug policies have so greatly affected those incarcerated there, and how the very nature of punishment in women?s detention centers has been deeply altered as a result."...

This volume focuses on women whose lives are entangled in the workings of the Mafia, drawing on courtroom testimonies, interviews, contemporary journalism and recent research. Individual narratives illuminate women's experiences, both as victims or active opponents.