Unreasonable women : three stories of violence, imprisonment, and extraordinary survival / Justine van der Leun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Van der Leun, Justine, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Female offenders--United States.

Female offenders.

Abused women--United States--Social conditions.

Abused women.

Victims of family violence--United States--Social conditions.

Victims of family violence.

Self-defense (Law)--United States.

Self-defense (Law).

False imprisonment--United States.

False imprisonment.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration--United States.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration.

Abused women--Social conditions.

United States.

Genre:

Case studies

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xxix, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2026]

Summary:

"A tour de force of narrative reporting that examines how women are criminalized for actions they take to defend themselves or a loved one from violence, revealing a legal system that fails to protect them but never fails to punish them. Thirty percent of women serving time on murder and manslaughter charges in the U.S. are criminalized survivors: women who are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for protecting themselves or a loved one from physical or sexual violence. When journalist Justine van der Leun set out to examine the phenomenon of criminalized survivors, she was met with silence, indifference, and a profound absence of data on the hundreds of thousands of women who have been forced into impossible choices and found themselves on the receiving end of the full force of the law. In Unreasonable Women, van der Leun sets out to tell the stories of these women, weaving together her own extensive on-the-ground research with the narratives of three criminalized survivors to examine how and why women are punished in America. In the lives of Tanisha, Jema, and TC, we see how the system fails survivors long before it punishes them and how familial, societal, and state violence replicate when early trauma is unacknowledged and untreated. Deeply researched and compellingly told, Unreasonable Women is a passionate call to action--and a forensic denunciation of a broken system that would rather condemn a woman to life behind bars than face up to its own failings"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Prologue

Introduction

Part one: Girlhood. The hat game

Celia's land

Tomboy Joe

Part two: A so-called crime. A perfect setup

Another shot

Alibi

No choice but to do it

Scranton

Little foxes

Part three: Prison and beyond. Swampland

Marriage material

Free from the inside

By design

Thanksgiving

A feel-good story

I am

Epilogue

Appendix: Data findings

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 298-301) and index.

Other Format:

Online version Van der Leun, Justine Unreasonable women

ISBN:

9780063241596

0063241595

9780063241602

0063241609

OCLC:

1535296309