Disrupting the Abuse-Prison Nexus: The Gendered Violence of Prosecution and Abolitionist Feminist Approaches to Social Care Work

Sid P. Jordan (), Emily Thuma, Aylaliyah Assefa Birru, Deirdre Wilson, Romarilyn Ralston, Norma Cumpian and Joseph Hankins
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Sid P. Jordan: School of Social Work, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201, USA
Emily Thuma: School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA 98195, USA
Aylaliyah Assefa Birru: Sentencing Project, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 95817, USA
Deirdre Wilson: Sentencing Project, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 95817, USA
Romarilyn Ralston: Sentencing Project, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 95817, USA
Norma Cumpian: Sentencing Project, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 95817, USA
Joseph Hankins: Sentencing Project, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 95817, USA

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: The vast majority of people in U.S. women’s prisons are survivors of interpersonal violence, a pattern that organizers and advocates have referred to as the abuse-to-prison pipeline. This article critically examines criminal prosecution from the perspectives of survivors of interpersonal violence who faced long prison sentences in California. In-depth interviews and group discussions were generated through a participatory process at a gathering to launch the University of California Sentencing Project, a partnership with the community-based organization California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The twenty-two formerly incarcerated participants had collectively spent more than 300 years imprisoned. Drawing on their lived experiences spanning several decades and multiple jurisdictions, this article offers an unyielding account of tactics of isolation, intimidation, narrative manipulation, and confinement as definitional to prosecutorial practice and culture. This criminalized survivor-centered analysis of prosecution shows how one of the most robustly funded public interventions for interpersonal violence is not merely failing to protect victims but is protracting patterns of abuse and coercive control. Implications are discussed in terms of social care work and collective defense rooted in abolition feminism.

Keywords: criminal legal systems; prosecution; interpersonal violence; criminalized survivors; social work; participatory action research; abolition feminism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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