Black Feminist Criminological Thought – Qualitative Contemplations

• In Event: Theorizing Race and the Criminal Legal System

Abstract

According to Patricia Hill Collins (1999), “This dialectic of oppression and activism, the tension between the suppression of Black women’s ideas and our intellectual activism in the face of that suppression, constitutes the politics of U.S. Black feminist thought” (p.3). Nowhere is this more evident that in the politics of criminology and criminal justice. From the unmistakable overrepresentations of Black women throughout the criminal justice system, to the ancillary, “collateral consequences” faced through familial, parental, and social experiences, black women occupy a unique, devalued perspective on these systems and practices. Through in-depth interviews and thematic analysis, the researchers have gained insight into how Black women understand and experience criminal justice and criminology.

Authors

• Scott Bowman, Texas State University

• Elisa Descartes, Texas State University