This Symposium Guest Editor’s Note is an adapted version of the Introduction to “The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration” (UC Press 2020).
Aya Gruber Posts
The Troubling Alliance Between Feminism and Policing
by Aya Gruber | Sep 4, 2020 | Policing
My intent is not to cast aspersions on feminism or even “White feminism” but, in the vein of James Forman Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own and Naomi Murakawa’s, The First Civil Right, to tell a complex story of feminism’s relationship to the American penal state so that we feminists can, in Murakawa’s words, “reexamine the scaffolding beneath our explanations for mass incarceration” in order to better fight it.
Making Drunk Sex a Crime: Why a New Push to ‘Close a Loophole’ Would Actually Establish a Troubling New Legal Regime
by Aya Gruber | Jan 16, 2020 | Sentencing
As part of this year’s state of the state agenda, Gov. Cuomo announced sweeping changes to the criminal laws governing intoxicated sex. He has not characterized these reforms as radical but as merely “closing a loophole” in the rape laws, to make it so that not only involuntarily but voluntarily intoxicated people are unable to consent to sexual activity.
Why Is Defining Consent So Difficult?
by Aya Gruber | Jun 5, 2019 | Sexual Assault
Consent is a concept at the center of criminal law and sexual assault. So, why is it so difficult to accurately define? Sexual assault laws have evolved from requiring the victim to resist toward requiring consent. However, “consent” is defined in many ways.