Dom Rosario on Arrested Justice

    In Ritchie's introduction to the book, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America's Prison Nation, she brings up many points of interest. One such point that I found to be most interesting was her argument that women of color, largely Black women, are often made to be criminals instead of victims.
     This particular argument led me to think about the distrust that comes from marginalized communities toward law enforcement. For a long time, I had the idea that law enforcement was meant to be there to help, not hurt people. Growing up in a predominantly white town with very little  visible crime, it never occurred to me that to some groups of people, the law was not their friend. This reading, along with many others within the GWS program, has opened my eyes to the oppressions that other people face because of the legal system. It brought about a great deal of questioning in my head about who the legal system was really created for and who it was, and evidently is, mean to hurt.
    Richie's point not only touched on race, but also on this issue of gender. When she discussed the case of the New Jersey 4, both the perpetrator and the victims were African American, yet it was still the women who were treated as the criminals, not the man. This particular story led to me thinking about the interaction between these two often oppressed groups and how those interactions affect their relationship with law enforcement. How can one simple little tweak in what group a person belongs to change how a story that seems clear what happened is portrayed in the media? How can this portrayal change people's lives in such a negative way?
    While reading the introduction, my mind came up with a few more recent incidences in a woman of color was treated as a criminal when in fact she had been a victim. The first case that came to mind was the case of Bresha Meadows, a teenage woman of color who was charged with the murder of her father even with multiple statements from family members that he had been extremely abusive. This particular case also had statements from law enforcement that said they couldn't do anything without the cooperation of the mother.
    The reminder of this fairly recent case while reading the introduction led to the thought that this is the exact reason people do not trust the system to do what they claim they are trying to do, which Richie discusses as well. The Law system claims to remove 'criminals' from the streets, but it so happens that when a woman of color defends herself from someone who has been abusing her, she becomes the criminal. Richie brought up the case of the New Jersey 4, which was a very similar case of self defense that ended with the perpetrator being viewed as the victim and the true victims being labeled the criminals.


There have been a great deal of movements that seek to abolish the "prison nation" Richie refers to in the introduction. In these movements, does there seem to be a concern for women of color such as the ones above? Are there any specific Prison Abolition groups that focus on women of color?