Paper Title: The Criminalization of Black Women and the Growth of the Carceral State in Detroit, 1870-1900

• In Event: The Future of Criminology can be Found in its Past

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, American prison leaders described women as a subset of the prison population that they considered incredibly deviant but also receptive to reform. This paper offers a qualitative and historical examination of how ideas of modernization, gender, class, and race confronted shifting notions of criminality and punishment practices. Detroit’s emerging criminal justice system and its treatment of women, especially Black women, in the late nineteenth century provides a textured case study to examine how incarcerated women navigated the policing of race, gender, and class. By investigating legal histories, historical newspapers, and prison records, this paper analyzes how women maneuvered within a growing carceral landscape in a rapidly expanding urban area. The web of policies, practices, and individual decisions converged and established a firm foundation for the expansion of the carceral state in the twentieth century. This paper reveals how harsh punishment practices for women were meted out according to gender norms and racialized myths. Importantly, the durability of these policies allowed for women’s prisons to become a legitimate institution despite campaigns for reform and abolition.

Author

• Bonnie Ernst, University of Florida