Criminalization & Prison Policy

This page lists publications growing out of ongoing research with criminalized women in the Boston, MA area. For more on that research you can go to Can’t Catch a Break.


2014 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk), Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal ResponsibilityUniversity of California Press. (Received Honorable Mention: Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award of the Association for Humanist Sociology, 2015; Received Distinguished Book Award from the Western Social Science Association, 2016.)

2019 Triple jeopardy: Women’s employment struggles postincarceration. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation.

2015 Alternatives to Incarceration: Be Careful What You Wish ForTruthout

2014 Be Careful About Sending Domestic Abusers to Jail. It Might Make them More ViolentWashington Post.

2014 “Medicalization of the Death and Other Penalties.” Truthout.org.

2014 “Scripting Suffering in an Age of Personal Responsibility,” Contexts 13(2): 38-43.

2014 “Sex, Race and Prison’s Violent Double Standard: Incarcerating Men Hurts Women, Too.” Salon.com.

2013 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Criminalized Women and the Healthcare System: The Case for Continuity of Services,” Journal of Correctional Health Care 19(3): 164-177.

2013 “Post-Incarceration Volunteer Work Opportunities for Women: A Proposal.” Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights.

2013 “(Legal) Drugs and Women Behind Bars. Interview and report posted on WBUR.ORG (Boston’s NPR news station).

2013 “Our Prisons are Drugging Women.” Salon.com.

2012 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Criminalized Women and Twelve Step Programs: Addressing Violations of the Law with a Spiritual Cure,” Implicit Religion 15(1): 37-60.

2012 “Making the Corrections Master Plan Work for Women.” Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights.

2011 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Women and the Criminal Justice Landscape in Massachusetts: Where Are They Now?” Interview and report posted on WBUR.ORG (Boston’s NPR news station).

2011 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Mothering in the Shadow of the United States Correctional System,” in Michelle Walks and Naomi McPherson, eds., Mothering: Anthropological Perspectives. Toronto, Ontario: Demeter Press. Pp. 293-306.

2011 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Gender Overdetermination and Resistance: The Case of Criminalized Women,” Feminist Theory 12 (3): 317-333.

2011 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Whose Higher Power: Criminalized Women Confront the Twelve Steps,” Feminist Criminology 6 (4): 308-322.

2008 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Why Health Care Services for Postincarceration Women are Ineffective,” Women, Girls and Criminal Justice 9/6.

2008 (with Maureen Norton-Hawk) “Disrupted Lives, Fragmented Care: Illness Experiences of Criminalized Women,” Women and Health 48(1).

2007 Barriers to Health Care for Women who have been Incarcerated (with Maureen Norton-Hawk), publication of Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University.