This book critically engages criminal law issues relating to sexuality and violence in order to argue that an attention to emotions can produce a more nuanced, and more adequate, feminist account of legal subjectivity. Although the relationship between law and feminism has resulted in a vast body of work, the issue of emotions has not been foregrounded in feminist legal scholarship in India. Indeed, many feminists have argued that reason and not emotion must provide the foundational basis for all laws and legal reforms; an argument that has led to a division of the legal and the psychic or the emotional into separate and distinct zones. Challenging this separation, the book engages a range of recent criminal law cases and legislations in India in order to advocate for a ‘feminine’ law that embraces its inherent cracks and contradictions. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the book takes up a range of issues surrounding sexuality and violence in order to propose a shift from viewing law as reason to seeing law as the terrain of messy and contradictory emotional continuums; where legal subjects are viewed in their psychic dimensions, and where law itself is opened up to its own unconscious desires. Foregrounding emotions in this way, the book argues, can offer new insights into the operation of criminal law, and new orientations for feminist ways of responding to, and engaging with, it. This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the areas of criminal law, legal feminism, and gender studies.

"This book pursues the argument that an attention to emotions produces a more nuanced, and more adequate, feminist account of legal subjectivity. Although the relationship between law and feminism has resulted in a vast body of work, the issue of emotions has not been foregrounded in feminist legal scholarship. Indeed, many feminists have argued that reason and not emotion must provide the foundational basis for all laws and legal reforms; an argument that has led to a division of the legal and the psychic or the emotional into separate and distinct zones. Challenging this separation, the book engages a range of recent criminal law cases and legislation in India in order to advocate a 'feminisation' of law. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the book takes up a range of issues surrounding sexual violence in order to propose a shift from viewing law as reason to seeing law as the terrain of messy and contradictory emotional continuums; where legal subjects are viewed in their psychic dimensions, and where law itself is opened up to its own unconscious desires. Foregrounding emotions in this way, the book argues, can offer new insights into the operation of criminal law, and new orientations for feminist ways of responding to, and engaging with, it. This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the areas of criminal law, legal feminism, and gender studies"--

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law reflects the continued transformation of criminal law into a global discipline, providing scholars with a comprehensive international resource, a common point of entry into cutting edge contemporary research and a snapshot of the state and scope of the field. To this end, the Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter, disciplinarily, geographically, and systematically. Its contributors include current and future research leaders representing a variety of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise, and research agendas. The Handbook is divided into four parts: Approaches & Methods (I), Systems & Methods (II), Aspects & Issues (III), and Contexts & Comparisons (IV). Part I includes essays exploring various methodological approaches to criminal law (such as criminology, feminist studies, and history). Part II provides an overview of systems or models of criminal law, laying the foundation for further inquiry into specific conceptions of criminal law as well as for comparative analysis (such as Islamic, Marxist, and military law). Part III covers the three aspects of the penal process: the definition of norms and principles of liability (substantive criminal law), along with a less detailed treatment of the imposition of norms (criminal procedure) and the infliction of sanctions (prison law). Contributors consider the basic topics traditionally addressed in scholarship on the general and special parts of the substantive criminal law (such as jurisdiction, mens rea, justifications, and excuses). Part IV places criminal law in context, both domestically and transnationally, by exploring the contrasts between criminal law and other species of law and state power and by investigating criminal law's place in the projects of comparative law, transnational, and international law.

Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, The Feminist War on Crime documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.

This illuminating Research Handbook analyses the role that emotions play and ought to play in legal reasoning and practice, rejecting the simplistic distinction between reason and emotion.

A unique theoretical and empirical examination of women's embodied experience of imprisonment in England. The author examines how women's experience of prison can be understood through a sociological focus on the interaction between body and emotion.

WINNER OF THE HILLMAN PRIZE FOR BOOK JOURNALISM, THE HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD, AND THE LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST * LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST * ABA SILVER GAVEL AWARD FINALIST * KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY: Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, BookRiot, Economist, New York Times Staff Critics “A seminal and breathtaking account of why home is the most dangerous place to be a woman . . . A tour de force.” -Eve Ensler "Terrifying, courageous reportage from our internal war zone." -Andrew Solomon "Extraordinary." -New York Times ,“Editors' Choice” “Gut-wrenching, required reading.” -Esquire "Compulsively readable . . . It will save lives." -Washington Post “Essential, devastating reading.” -Cheryl Strayed, New York Times Book Review An award-winning journalist's intimate investigation of the true scope of domestic violence, revealing how the roots of America's most pressing social crises are buried in abuse that happens behind closed doors. We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a “global epidemic.” In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence, even as its tendrils reach unseen into so many of our most pressing national issues, from our economy to our education system, from mass shootings to mass incarceration to #MeToo. We still have not taken the true measure of this problem. In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder gives context for what we don't know we're seeing. She frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths-that if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and most insidiously that violence inside the home is a private matter, sealed from the public sphere and disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

Emotions remain largely invisible in the management of criminal justice practice. This book seeks to uncover some of the underground emotional work of practitioners and make visible the impact of both positive and negative emotions, which play a crucial role in practitioner-offender relationships. Exploring how practitioners understand, regulate and work with emotion, Knight argues that the 'soft skills' of emotion are more likely to achieve motivation and change in offenders than the 'hard' skills of punishment, monitoring and surveillance. The book examines some of the gendered implications of this practice and develops an argument for the explicit building of emotional resources within organizations to sustain the development, enhancement and support of emotional literacy in the workforce. Using practice examples, Knight reveals how practitioners can benefit from having an understanding of their own emotions and how these can impact on their practice. This unique and accessible book will be a valuable resource to practitioners across the criminal justice sector including probation officers, youth justice workers, police and prison officers, social workers, policymakers and managers, as well as scholars working within criminology, criminal justice and probation.

From beauty pageant protests to fire bombings of pornographic video stores, emotions are a powerful but often unexamined force underlying feminist activism. They are at play in the experiences of injustice, exclusion, caring, and suffering that have fed women’s commitment to building and sustaining a new world. Feeling Feminism examines the ways in which emotions such as anger, rage, joy, and hopefulness influenced second-wave feminis action and theorizing across Canada. Drawing on affect theory to convey the passion, sense of possibility, and collective political commitment that have characterized feminism, the contributors to this volume reveal its full impact on contemporary Canada and highlight the contested, sometimes exclusionary nature of the movement itself. Insights from gender and women’s studies, cultural and literary theory, social psychology, and sociology infuse Feeling Feminism as the contributors explore how emotions shaped and nourished feminist activism. More generally, they demonstrate the power of emotions, desires, and actions to transform the world.

Women criminal defense attorneys routinely handle cases that would grossly offend the sensibilities of the ordinary woman or man. Often asked to use their gender as a strategy to strengthen the defense, they struggle with myriad moral and ideological conflicts inherent in representing men accused of such violent crimes against women as rape, domestic abuse, and child molestation. This groundbreaking work explores how women attorneys manage those conflicts, how they use ideologies in defense of their work, and how they cope with the emotional stress of their professional lives. Drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic research, Cynthia Siemsen presents thirteen provocative case studies to illustrate the unique interplay between ideology and emotion in these women. Skillfully blending the words of criminal attorneys themselves with a solid theoretical framework, she explores the ways in which women's perspectives about their identities, roles, and emotions evolve through three distinct stages: early, mid-career, and seasoned attorney. Siemsen argues convincingly that the stresses of public defense work, including dealing with such burdens as California's stringently enforced three-strikes law, create much more conflict for women than intrinsic contradictions between feminist beliefs and professional ideologies. The longer a woman practices law, the author finds, the better she becomes at managing her emotions by strictly adhering to the constitutional ideal of protecting individual rights. An appendix, "Ambivalent Identities: Men of Color Who Prosecute Their 'Own,'" offers a comparative viewpoint of the experiences of African American male prosecutors. This insightful volume offers a unique lens through which to view the work lives of women criminal defense attorneys and sheds new light on how they resolve and survive the moral dilemmas and emotional stress of their jobs.