The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/tag/women-and-justice/)
A growing number of women in Oklahoma are facing criminal charges for using substances during pregnancy, as more babies have been born exposed to drugs in recent years.
Women formerly incarcerated at the state’s only women’s facility have long said health care behind bars is poor. The reform is one of many in response to years of abuse.
American prisons are profoundly inhospitable for incarcerated women — but prison education programs can help women on the inside resist the ‘inhumanity’ of incarceration, say Kathy Boudin and Judith Clark, two formerly incarcerated women now advocating for prison reform.
Despite proof that female officers use less force and avoid more complaints, state police departments often fail to change the perception that state policing isn’t for women.
While the #MeToo movement has had an enormous cultural impact, prosecuting sexual assault cases far from Hollywood leaves too many victims feeling unheard, discriminated against, and bereft of justice, a webinar on the justice system’s response to crimes of sexual violence was told this week.
Widespread gendered violence in the U.S. has been hiding in plain sight for years. Anecdotal evidence suggests the problem has gotten worse during the lockdowns associated with the Covid-19 epidemic.
The number of women serving life terms in prison has risen by 43 percent since 2008. Many of them might have received different sentencing outcomes if courts took account of the role played by trauma and abuse in their crimes, says the Sentencing Project.
Two civil suits have been filed against Alan Braid, a physician in San Antonio who admitted to performing an abortion considered illegal under the new Texas law. It represents a potential test of the constitutionality of the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban.
Two scholars argue that restraining incarcerated pregnant women poses health and development risks to both mothers and babies.
Attorneys representing Texas Right to Life agreed to a temporary restraining order blocking the group and its members from filing lawsuits against abortion providers under the state’s harsh new anti-abortion law.